^o.._^S..S. 

"PRIVATE  LIBRARY 

of 
KIMBALL  YOUNG 


THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 


•Tl 


1^^ 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON    •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN   &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THEORIES    OF 

SOCIAL    PROGRESS 


A   CRITICAL    STUDY   OF   THE    ATTEMPTS    TO 

FORMULATE   THE   CONDITIONS    OF 

HUMAN    ADVANCE 


BY 
ARTHUR   JAMES   TODD,    Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR   OF   SOCIOLOGY 
UNIVERSITY   OF   MINNESOTA 


Wefaj  gork 

THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

1918 

uill  rights   reserved 


Copyright,  1918, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  January,  1918. 


NorfajODlI  ^KBB 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


f]  l^WVfiRSTTY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

^   '  SANTA  BARBAEA 


t4 


"The  characteristic  of  Education  is  this, 
above  all :  a  Being  naturally  inclined  to  live 
for  self  and  in  self  is  to  be  made  disposed  to 
live  for  others  so  as  to  live  again  in  others 
by  others."  — AuGUSTE  Comte. 


II 


"The  progress  of  civilisation  depends,  I 
should  say,  on  the  extension  of  the  sense  of 
duty  which  each  man  owes  to  society  at 
large."  — Leslie  Stephen. 


Ill 


"  Man  is  something  that  shall  be  surpassed." 

—  Fr.  Nietzsche. 


PREFACE 

From  Comte  onward  sociologists  have  pretty  generally 
agreed  that  the  only  justification  for  a  Science  of  Society 
is  its  contributions  to  a  workable  theory  of  progress. 
Hence  they  have  attempted  each  in  his  own  way  to  formu- 
late such  a  theory  and  to  float  it.  But  historians,  econo- 
mists, philosophers,  and  biologists  as  well  have  been  for  a 
hundred  years  past  laying  down  what  they  considered  to 
be  the  necessary  conditions  of  human  improvement.  So 
far  we  have  had  in  English  no  easily  accessible  comprehen- 
sive digest  or  summary  of  these  widely  scattered  and 
divergent  materials.  This  volume  essays  to  bring  together 
the  most  important  contributions  of  English,  American, 
and  Continental  writers  to  the  literature  of  social  progress. 
But  it  is  more  than  a  mere  digest ;  it  attempts  at  least  a 
critical  analysis  and  an  evaluation.  Events  have  con- 
ferred a  certain  timeliness  upon  such  a  study ;  for  when  the 
human  values  of  a  whole  world  are  cast  into  the  crucible, 
as  in  the  present  war,  it  becomes  imperative  that  the 
world  be  rebuilt  according  to  some  sounder  principles, 
principles  which  will  make  the  world  safer  and  assure  its 
improvement.  Under  such  circumstances  the  study  of 
the  underlying  facts  of  human  progress  is  no  mere  academic 
performance ;  it  is  an  issue  forced  upon  all  thinking  men 
by  dint  of  a  world  in  arms. 

Even  a  superficial  survey  of  three  centuries  of  opinion 
reveals  that  the  attitude  toward  social  progress  varies, 
like  that  towards  God,  from  bhnd  acceptance  of  it  as  the 

vii 


Vlll  PREFACE 

solidest  of  facts  to  utter  rejection  of  it  as  the  greatest  of 
illusions.  This  book  frankly  takes  a  middle  course,  not 
-from  a  timorous  habit  of  playing  safe,  but  as  the  result  of 
accepting  the  challenge  of  what  seems  to  be  fact.  It 
records  the  gradual  emergence  of  six  propositions  and 
the  growing  conviction  of  their  truth  and  importance : 
(i)  Social  progress  is  theoretically  possible.  (2)  But  it  is 
not  necessary  or  inevitable  or  inherent  in  the  nature  of 
things.  (3)  Social  progress  is  a  term  used  with  reckless 
imprecision :  many  phenomena  are  called  progress,  or  are 
confused  with  it,  which  have  little  kinship  with  it  in  either 
fact  or  theory.  (4)  It  should  be  possible  to  work  out  a 
series  of  objective  tests  for  social  progress;  and  if  we  are 
ever  to  have  a  Science  of  Society  such  objective  tests  must 
be  part  of  its  ultimate  purpose.  (5)  Social  progress  is  a 
complex,  more  or  less  organic,  and  cannot  be  interpreted  in 
terms  of  any  one  set  of  factors  or  conditioning  phenomena. 
(6)  If  humanity  is  to  hold  the  threads  of  its  own  destiny 
and  rise  from  ages  of  bHnd  drift  to  a  plane  of  mastery,  it 
will  be  through  discovering  and  utilizing  new  types  of  edu- 
cation. 

No  apology  is  necessary  for  these  propositions.  But  a 
word  as  to  the  attitude  of  mind  in  which  they  were  reached 
may  not  be  out  of  place :  I  mean,  concretely,  the  appeal  to 
objective  fact.  Perhaps  we  cannot  discover  objectively 
any  long-range  cosmic  plan  in  the  world  of  men.  But 
philosophy  and  religion  may  take  up  the  problem  where  we 
leave  it.  Speculation  is  not  to  be  damned  because  phi- 
losophers have  made  mistakes.  I  am  perfectly  wilhng  to 
indulge  in  speculation  but  must  not  stamp  and  issue  it  as 
objective  truth.  When  I  say,  for  example,  that  man's 
history,  stretching  back,  as  it  probably  does,  twenty  mil- 
lion years,  leads  me  to  feel  that  all  this  elaborate  expendi- 
ture of  time  and  energy  is  an  earnest  of  some  manifest 


PREFACE  IX 

destiny  for  man  and  the  world  ;  when  I  count  the  facts  of 
man's  evolution  as  suggestive  of  purpose  in  the  universe; 
when  I  figure  up  what  it  has  cost  to  produce  the  race  and 
my  individual  self,  I  can  easily  let  myself  go  on  to  the  point 
of  feehng  that  both  the  race  and  myself  should  fare  fur- 
ther, hfe  upon  life,  beyond  this  scanty  allotted  span  of 
years.  But  in  all  these  emotional  outbursts  and  flights  of 
speculation  I  must  not  allow  their  seductive  warmth  to 
delude  me  into  beheving  that  they  rest  upon  proof.  They 
may  stimulate  me  in  a  way,  but  they  may  also  paralyze 
me  into  complacency,  a  sense  of  the  priceless  value  of  my 
own  amiable  self,  and  other  like  immoralities.  Hence 
integrity  and  safety  made  it  imperative  to  go  out  into  the 
open  and  attempt  at  least  to  confront  objective  fact. 

While  most  of  these  chapters  were  worked  out  before 
the  great  catastrophe  overwhelmed  Europe,  no  serious 
modification  of  either  fact  or  conclusion  has  seemed  nec- 
essary in  consequence. 

My  original  plan  included  a  detailed  treatment  of  the 
educational  reconstruction  implied  in  the  conclusions  here 
outlined.  But  the  writings  of  Professor  John  Dewey  and 
other  modernists  in  education  have  rendered  such  a  dis- 
cussion not  only  gratuitous  but  presumptuous. 

This  book  is  frankly  not  the  result  of  an  uncontrollable 
impulse  to  tell  the  world  how  to  run  its  affairs.  It  grew 
honestly  out  of  an  attempt  to  meet  an  academic  situation, 
to  teach  a  course  in  which  no  text  was  available.  Hence  it 
is  a  cooperative  venture,  and  it  is  fitting  that  I  should  dis- 
claim all  originality  save  in  the  analyses,  the  arrangement, 
and  the  point  of  view.  The  materials  were  furnished  by 
the  great  brotherhood  of  scholarship  which  has  been  striv- 
ing to  make  this  world  of  ours  somewhat  more  habitable. 
But  special  credit  is  due  those  friends  and  colleagues  who 
have  been  self-sacrificing  enough  to  read  and  criticize  the 


X  PREFACE 

manuscript.  I  am  particularly  indebted  to  my  friend 
Ray  C.  Brown  for  his  patient  reading  of  the  whole  volume ; 
to  Professor  Joseph  Peterson  for  his  aid  in  clarifying  the 
psychology  of  the  first  five  chapters ;  and  to  Dean  L.  D. 
Coffman  for  reviewing  the  chapter  on  educational  impli- 
cations. ' 


TABLE   OF    CONTENTS 


Preface 


PAGE 

vii 


PART  I. 

CHAPTER 


HUMAN  NATURE  AND   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 


I  The  Paradox  of  Human  Natxjre 

II  Primitive  Notions  of  the  Self 

III  The  Psychological  Analysis  of  the  Self 

IV  Self  as  a  Social  Product 

V  Self  as  a  Social  Product,  Continued 


3 

lO 

i6 

31 
S8 


PART   II. 


VI 
VII 


VIII 

IX 

X 

XI 

XII 

XIII 

XIV 

XV 

XVI 

^XVII 

XVIII 

XIX 
XX 


THE   CONCEPT  AND    CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS 

83 

113 


The  Concept  of  Progress 
The  Criteria  of  Progress 


PART  III.     THE   PROPHETS  OF   PROGRESS 

Introductory  Note  on  Interpretations  of  Progress    .  151 

(a)  Materialistic 

Geographic  Determinists 157 

The  Technicians  or  Inventionists 176 

Money 185 

Capital 188 

Division  of  Labor 195 

The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History  :  Statement   .  202 

The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History  :   Criticism  .  214 

(b)  Biological 

The  Selectionists 239 

The  Eugenists 257" 

The  Racialists 274 

The  Militarists 287 

On  Peaceful  Group  Contacts 309 

xi 


^^ 


xii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

(c)  Institutional 

XXI    Property 325 

XXII    The  Family 332 

XXIII    Government 336 

y  XXIV    Law   . 352 

XXV    Public  Opinion 365 

XXVI    Great  Men,  Heroes,  the  Elite 373 

XXVII     Great  Men,  Heroes,  the  Elite,  Continued  .        .        .  394 

XXVIII     Language 407 

XXIX    Religion 414 

(d)  Ideological 

XXX    The  Idealists 44i 

XXXI    The  Intellectualists 465 

XXXII    The  Artists 488 

PART  IV.     IMPLICATIONS  AND    CONCLUSIONS 

XXXIII  Some  Educational  Implications  of  Social  Progress  .  505 

XXXIV  Summary  and  Conclusions 535 

Bibliography  and  Supplementary  Readings        .        .  549 

Index 575 


PART    I 

HUMAN   NATURE   AND    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 


THEORIES   OF    SOCIAL 
PROGRESS 

CHAPTER   I 
THE  PARADOX   OF   HUMAN   NATURE 

The  conservative  from  his  easy-chair  at  the  club  dis- 
courses ghbly  of  what  he  chooses  to  call  Human  Nature, 
and  frequently  joins  forces  with  the  man  in  the  street  in 
condemning  offhand  some  simple  innovation  as  "contrary 
to  human  nature."  Too  often  pohtical  economists,  and 
other  less  able  critics  of  social  reform,  have  taunted  the  re- 
formers with  forgetting  poor  weak  human  nature  in  their 
schemes,  and  have  insisted  that  human  nature  must  be 
changed  before  any  comprehensive  or  enduring  amehora- 
tion  is  to  be  expected.  But  the  taunt  is  hardly  justified. 
Social  reformers  from  Plato  and  Jesus  onward,  including 
even  the  much  abused  sociahsts  who  are  considered  to  have 
been  most  lax  in  this  particular,  have  recognized  the 
necessity  of  modifying  human  nature  along  with  or  even 
preceding  changes  in  economic,  political,  and  other  social 
institutions,  the  objective  expressions  of  human  nature. 
These  critics  and  easy-chair  philosophers  are  not  absolutely 
without  guile  in  their  animadversions.  Their  taunt  is 
really  but  one  horn  of  a  dilemma  set  for  the  reformers. 
What  they  really  mean  is  this :  Your  schemes  won't  work 
unless  human  nature  changes ;  but  human  nature  doesn't 
change  —  science,    philosophy,    rehgion,    and    ethics    all 

3 


4  THEORIES    OF    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

agree  on  this ;  hence  your  schemes  are  the  idlest  vagaries ; 
save  your  breath  and  stand  by  the  estabhshed  order. 

Now,  all  sensible  people  accept  the  first  part  of  the 
dilemma ;  but  many  of  us  reject  the  second  as  ignorance 
or  willful  cant.  We  hold  that  human  nature  is  indefinitely, 
yes,  infinitely  modifiable.  We  assert  that  it  is  not  a  fixed 
quantity  or  quality  given  in  toto  once  and  for  all.  Men  who 
argue  for  this  fixity  usually  have  some  ulterior  purpose  or 
delude  themselves.  Such  a  concept  of  human  nature  is 
flung  at  us  or  piled  up  into  a  barricade  to  obstruct  essen- 
tial reforms,  where  reform  means  the  loss  of  some  oppor- 
tunity to  exploit,  the  foregoing  of  some  personal  advantage, 
and  the  socializing  of  opportunity. 

But  the  very  crudest  view  of  human  evolution  must 
a  priori  admit  that  human  character  is  plastic  and  poten- 
tially progressive,  or  else  remain  vague  and  meaningless. 
,  Mysticism  might  deny  it,  but  the  type  of  critic  we  have  in 
i^/mind  would  hardly  be  dubbed  mystical.  The  cynic  might, 
.iwvr  with  George  Meredith,  chaff  "that  wandering  ship  of  a 
,  I"'  _  drunken  pilot,  the  mutinous^  crew  and  the  angry  captain, 
calle^TIuman  Nature";  but  the  evolutionist  islast~of  all 
~men^  a  cynic!  THetrue  evolutionist  must  believe  that 
neither  human  nature  nor  man's  environment  is  a  given 
fixed  quantity.  Neither  is  static,  neither  is  mere  motley 
nor  fantastic.  Both  are  dynamic.  Man  and  his  envi- 
ronment along  with  him  (perhaps  including  God)  are  evolv- 
ing. And  this  process  of  'creative  evolution'  is  the  true 
order  of  nature.  Hence  there  is  truth  in  the  idea  that  dis- 
content with  any  "present  order"  is  the  highest  virtue.^ 

But  there  is  a  sense  in  which  everything  and  anything 
may  be  set  down  as  against  human  nature.  For  we  are 
all  a  complex  of  competing  ideas,   tendencies,   instincts, 

^  See  Berton  Braley's  poem  "  Discontent "  in  The  Survey,  February  8, 
1913- 


THE    PARADOX    OF    HUMAN    NATURE  5 

sentiments.  We  nre  n  mnlliplo  prr^on;ility,  or  perhaps 
jifhor  ,-1  ^niiilljvprsp'  of  potential  personalities,  forced  into 
a  sembki,n((-  of  unity  and  orderly  behavior  by  the  situations 
which  confront  and  menace  us  if  we  fail  to  offer  a  solid 
and  coherent  front  to  them.  Failure  means  a  mental 
house  divided  against  itself  —  insanity.  But  it  is  altogether 
conceivable  that  a  given  individual  or  the  race  as  a  whole 
may  present  different  types  of  unity  according  to  the 
strength  and  coloring  of  the  several  ideas  forced  into  this 
unity.  Hence  there  is  a  certain  show  of  validity  in  the  as- 
sumption that  this  institution  or  that  privilege  runs  counter 
to  human  nature,  for  the  assumption  includes  the  further 
assumption  that  this  human  nature  is  only  factitious  unity 
and  holds  in  it  certain  rebellious  ideas  or  sentiments  ever 
ready  to  break  loose  and  to  destroy.  Thus  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells  wrote  awhile  ago:  "Socialism  is  against  human 
nature.  That  is  true,  and  it  is  equally  true  of  everything 
else ;  capitahsm  is  against  human  nature,  competition  is 
against  human  nature,  cruelty,  kindness,  religion  and 
doubt,  monogamy,  polygamy,  celibacy,  decency,  indecency, 
piety  and  sin  are  all  against  human  nature.  Human 
nature  is  against  human  nature.  For  human  nature  is 
in  perpetual  conflict ;  it  is  the  Ishmael  of  the  Universe, 
against  everything  and  with  everything  against  it."^ 

Our  immediate  problem,  then,  is  to  examine  haw  human 
nature  is  made  and  Qf_what  it  is  made,  in  order  to  determine 
whether  it  may  he  adapted  to  the  demands  of  profprt^xl 
new  types  of  .political  and  economic  organization.  We 
assume,  of  course,  in  our  discussion  that  social  life  and 
individual  life  are  organic  unities ;  not,  to  be  sure,  on  any 
narrow  biologic  analogy,  but  in  the  sense  that  they  are 
real  wholes  and  that  any  analysis  of  them  into  parts  is 

1  New  Worlds  for  Old,  p.  203 ;  cf.  Gelett  Burgess,  The  Romance  of  the 
Commonplace,  p.  42. 


I 


<>* 


6  THEORIES    OF    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

necessarily  artificial  and  involves  a  certain  amount  of 
error.  We  agree  with  M.  Bergson  in  rejecting  the  common 
scientific  methodology  of  analysis  and  resynthesis  as  a 
means  of  getting  at  absolute  truth ;  its  resultant  is  a 
mosaic-world  instead  of  a  living  real  whole-world.  And 
yet  such  analyses  and  mosaics  are  the  price  of  our  in- 
tellectual existence.  Imagine  sitting  on  your  leopard  skin 
and  trying  to  think  or  feel  "society,"  or  *'I,"  or  "human 
nature,"  as  living  wholes!  We  must  perforce  fall  back 
upon  analysis.  But  in  our  present  study  we  shall  go  only 
so  far  in  the  analysis'  of  human  nature  as  to  pick  out  the 
"concept  of  self"  as  its  really  significant  element.  This  is 
the  common  center  for  the  self-regarding  or  the  altruistic 
motives  and  sentiments.  It  is  the  core  of  human  life. 
What  makes  a  man,  or  what  determines  his  conduct,  if  it  is 
not  what  he  thinks  of  himself,  or  what  others  think  of  him, 
or  what  he  thinks  others  might  think  or  should  think  of 
him,  that  is,  of  his  self? 

We  must  insist  sharply  that  our  problem  is  not  the  nature 
of  selfishness,  but  of  the  self.  It  is  a  problem  of  sociology 
and  only  incidentally  of  psychology.  That  it  is  of  tremen- 
dous practical  interest  will  appear  if  we  but  suggest  that 
on  the  proper  interpretation  of  self  and  self-building  depends 
the  working  out  of  such  social  problems  as  the  moral 
imbecile,  the  criminal,  the  apartment  house,  the  ownership 
of  houses  of  prostitution,  the  rich  malefactor,  eugenics, 
municipal  socialism  or  semi-socialism,  industrial  peace, 
cooperative  production. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  bring  in  at  this  point  a  critique  of 
theories  of  progress,  for  one  can  in  perfect  consistency  accept 
the  principle  of  progress,  and  deny  with  Bernard  Shaw  that 
we  have  progressed  an  inch  since  the  days  of  the  Hittites. 
Yet  it  is  eminently  fitting  to  remind  ourselves  that  no  sound 
principle  of  progress  can  be  formulated  without  a  sound  and 


THE    PARADOX    OF    HUMAN    NATURE  7 

accurate  notion  of  the  human  self..  Whatever  progress 
mankind  has  made  has  been  largely  of  the  hit-or-miss 
order,  planless,  sporadic,  more  or  less  unconscious.  One 
great  difficulty  has  been  ignorance  or  neglect  of  the  real 
significance  of  the  human  personality. 

If  we  are  to  have  any  conscious,  reasonable  plan  for  prog- 
ress which  shall  turn  our  factitious  winnings  into  real 
improvement  of  men  and  conditions,  we  must  proceed  ap- 
parently by  creating  a  human  type  with  a  personality  or 
"self"  so  modifiable  as  to  render  it  better  fitted  for  effective 
social  service.  Can  it  be  done?  I  believe  it  can.  I 
believe  it  in  spite  of,  and  perhaps  even  because  of,  the 
critics  of  human  nature. 

One  of  the  most  savage  of  early  nineteenth  century 
critics  of  the  "progressists,"  Thomas  Love  Peacock, 
admonished  his  contemporaries  to  beware  of  trusting  too 
much  in  their  powers  of  modifying  human  nature.  His 
"Beech  and  the  Sapling  Oak"  is  a  typical  example  of  this 
preaching : 

"For  the  tender  beech  and  the  sapling  oak, 
That  grow  by  the  shadowy  rill, 
You  may  cut  down  both  at  a  single  stroke, 
You  may  cut  down  which  you  will. 

"  But  this  you  must  know,  that  as  long  as  they  grow, 
Whatsoever  change  may  be. 
You  can  never  teach  either  oak  or  beech 
To  be  aught  but  a  greenwood  tree." 

But  so  far  as  I  know,  not  even  the  most  ardent  social 
reformer  (who  is  moderately  sane)  ever  plans  to  get  any- 
thing but  greenwood  trees  out  of  beeches.  He  is  not  so 
silly  as  to  hope  to  gather  figs  from  thistles  or  to  turn  men 
into  angels.  Modern  forestry  proves,  however,  that  there 
are  ways  of  getting  more  good  timber  out  of  a  given  area  of 


8  THEORIES    OF    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

mere  greenwood  than  we  used  to  imagine  possible.  The 
most  superficial  observer  gazing  idly  out  of  a  German 
railway  window  cannot  fail  to  notice  this.  Practically  our 
whole  forestry  service  in  the  United  States  is  based  on  this 
principle.  Further,  the  stock  breeder  and  the  botanist,  if 
they  do  not  offer  us  the  means,  at  least  show  us  certain 
positive  encouraging  results.  Such  processes  as  budding, 
grafting,  or  varying  the  nutrition,  produce  marked  changes 
in  the  plants  and  animals  thus  treated.  In  less  than  a 
generation  Luther  Burbank  shears  the  cactus  of  its  spines. 
Where  is  the  wizard  who  will  turn  thorny,  unproductive, 
selfish,  shirking,  exploiting,  cross-grained  human  natures 
into  cooperators,  good  citizens,  and  members  of  a  great 
united  human  brotherhood?  He  is  perhaps  even  now  in 
our  midst.  But  whoever  he  is,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  his 
means  will  be  social  education,  centering  about  a  new  concept 
of  the  human  self.  And  his  philosophy  will  be  a  con- 
structive optimism  that  includes  a  liberal  view  of  human 
nature,  precisely  because  human  nature  and  the  self  are 
trustworthy  when  given  proper  surroundings.  "Human 
nature  is  all  right  as  it  is  "  declares  a  modern  preacher; 
.  .  .  "Human  nature  needs  no  change,  and  nobody  is 
trying  to  change  it.  It  only  needs  a  chance."  ^  One  need 
not  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  human  nature  is  all  right ;  it  is 
enough  to  credit  it  with  being  right  enough  for  most  present 
purposes  if  given  proper  opportunities.  By  opportunities 
I  mean  not  taking  away  every  let  or  hindrance  to  personal 
whim  or  the  satisfaction  of  instinct ;  that  is,  allowing  human 
nature  to  "go  on  the  loose."  Opportunity  to  develop 
includes  education  to  self-control,  discipUnes,  rewards  and 

^  J.  H.  Holmes,  Revolutionary  Function  of  the  Modern  Church,  pp.  233-4. 
Cf .  for  a  lively  presentation  of  the  thesis  that  human  nature  is  not  inherently 
evil,  and  that  it  is  not  human  but  distorted  animalized  nature  which  con- 
stitutes the  real  obstacle  to  progress,  R.  G.  Davis,  "  Social  Inequality  and 
Social  Progress,"  Westminster  Review,  170:388-95. 


THE    PARADOX    OF    HUMAN    NATURE  9 

penalties,    inspirations,    renunciation,    and    all    the    other 
devices  for  rational  social  control. 

The  first  part  of  the  present  study  does  not  presume  to  be 
more  than  a  slender  and  tentative  effort  to  outline  this  new 
concept  of  the  ''self."  Three  main  lines  of  evidence  will  be 
tapped.  First,  ethnography  furnishes  much  illuminating 
material  to  demonstrate  the  savage's  hazy  and  mystical 
sense  of  personality  and  especially  of  its  subordination  to  the 
group  unity.  Next,  psychology  (and  especially  pathologic 
psychology)  reveals  how  the  self  is  fixed,  altered,  united, 
dispersed,  divided,  or  even  lost.  Finally,  sociology  and 
social  psychology  declare  in  no  uncertain  terms  that  the 
sense  of  self  is  a  social  product  and  should  indicate  how  the 
self  may  be  controlled,  molded,  colored,  and  adapted  for 
human  welfare  and  progress. 


CHAPTER  II 
PRIMITIVE  NOTIONS   OF  THE   SELF 

Many  of  the  quaint  and  superstitious  practices  of 
primitive  men  are  referable  to  a  very  hazy  notion  of  their 
"persons,"  their  "selves."  In  this  they  strongly  resemble 
children,  who,  it  is  notorious,  are  frequently  very  slow  to 
identify  themselves  with  their  own  physical  organism  and 
feelings.  A  Kafir  boy  could  not  tell  his  European  visitor 
whether  a  certain  pain  was  within  his  head  or  in  the  roof  of 
his  hut.  American  schoolboys  have  been  known  to  locate 
"an  awful  sore  throat"  in  their  stomachs.  Such  vague 
definitions  of  the  physical  self  illustrate  the  lack  of  sharp 
duahsms  which  is  the  distinctive  mark  of  rudimentary 
thought ;  that  is,  failure  to  distinguish  between  subject  and 
object,  in-consciousness  and  outside-of-consciousness,  self 
and  other-self ;  between  imagination  or  feeling  and  reality, 
between  belief  and  knowledge.  Hence  one  need  not  be 
surprised  to  find  the  primitive  man  conceiving  his  self  and 
its  changes  in,  to  us,  absurd  and  incongruous  terms. 

Thus  the  name  has  been  almost  universally  considered  as 
part  of  the  self.^  To  change  his  name  meant  to  change  a 
man's  character,  because  the  name  not  only  represented 
him,  but  was  in  a  sense  actually  himself.  The  same  prin- 
ciple holds  nowadays  when  initiation  into  an  order  or 
brotherhood  involves  taking  a  new  name :   the  name  is  an 

*  For  detailed  evidence  on  this  and  other  points  to  follow  see  the  writer's 
article  in  Amer.  Jour.  Psychol.,  27  :  171-202,  April,  1916. 

10 


PRIMITIVE    NOTIONS    OF    THE    SELF  II 

ideal  to  be  incorporated.  Again,  the  shadow  as  a  part  of 
the  self  was  an  extremely  common  behef,  which  survived 
in  European  folklore  and  medieval  poetry,  and  which  still 
occurs  among  school  children.  Likewise,  the  image  or 
likeness  or  picture  is  identified  with  the  self  by  savages 
and  by  the  modern  superstitious  who  cling  to  miracle- 
working  icons,  pictures,  medals,  scapularies,  rehcs,  and  all 
the  paraphernaUa  of  fetish-worship.  By  whatever  means 
belief  in  the  soul  or  dream-double  of  men  arose,  there  is  no 
doubting  its  influence  on  their  philosophy  of  the  self. 
Changes  in  health  or  character  are  charged  to  mishaps 
suffered  by  this  very  material  part  of  the  personality :  if 
it  loses  its  way  in  the  dark,  I  sicken ;  if  somebody  steals  it, 
I  die.  Another  fascinating  development  of  the  primitive 
sense  of  personality  is_the  identification  of  propertv  as  part 
of_the_.S£ji.  A  man's  tools  or  weapons,  utensils,  even  his  [ 
cattle,  his  slaves,  and  his  wives  are  counted  as  part  of,' 
himself,  hterally  and  unequivocally.  Hence  they  are  fre- 
quently destroyed  at  his  death  or  buried  with  him. 

But  in  all  these  attempts  to  define  the  limits  of  per- 
sonahty  the  individual  gets  his  cue  from  the  group  to  which 
he  belongs  :  folk^  belief  stamps  iJselfja2on_dieJiidivi^^ 
Frequently  there  is  a  distinct  sense  of  some  mystical  sort 
of  relationship  between  the  individual  self  and  the  larger  \ 
self,  the  group  personality.  Each  man  is  sunk  in  the  matrix 
of  his  family  or  village  or  tribe.  This  more  or  less  instinc- 
tive subordination  of  individual  to  group  in  both  his  actions 
and  his  thought  of  himself  results  from  the  exigencies  of  the 
primitive  struggle  to  live  and  propagate  in  the  face  of  a 
menacing  environment.  Safety  lies  along  the  path  of 
solidarity.  It  was  just  this  utter  like-mindedness,  this 
coalescence  of  the  unit  with  the  mass  that  permitted  the 
human  species  to  subjugate  its  rivals  ;  but  at  the  same  time 
it  made  the  process  of  development  almost  infinitely  slow. 


5-^ 


12  THEORIES    OF    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

The  bearing  of  this  subordination  of  individual  self  to 
group  unity  can  be  illustrated  in  various  ways.  When, 
for  example,  the  stage  of  the  Hero- God  is  reached  in 
human  history,  these  gods  are  at  first  group  deities,  not 
personal  gods.  Likewise,  just  as  the  individual  totem 
grew  out  of  the  group  totem,  so  the  patron  saint  of  the 
individual  appears  later  than  the  more  universal  saint. 
Even  more  striking  are  primitive  notions  of  sin  and  its 
punishment.  Sin  at  this  level  was  wholly  an  objective  or 
(  ritualistic  breach,  not  a  sense  of  ethical  short-coming. 
Precisely  because  it  was  objective  and  because  of  the  close- 
knit  life  of  the  group  in  other  respects,  the  sense  of  sin  be- 
came, too,  a  group  sense.  Hence  the  breach  of  any  member 
involved  the  whole.  Ten  righteous  men  might  have  saved 
Sodom,  but  the  un-rightness  of  one  would  have  sufficed  to 
bring  down  its  destruction.  Thjs^sense  of  ..grovip_  re^pnT)^;^- 
bility  becomes  the  _source  ^f  a  tremendous  sanction  Jqx 
discipline  and  approved  conduct^  It  gives  to  the  taboo  its 
inviolability. 

Beliefs  in  reincarnation  and  family  or  tribal  totems  re- 
enforce  this  palpable  sinking  of  individuality  in  the  mass, 
not  only  of  contemporaries  or  posterity  but  also  of  the  leg- 
endary past.  Still  further  evidence  crops  out  of  the  ritual 
practices  by  which  savage  children  are  endowed  with  per- 
sonalities distinct  from  those  of  their  parents  or  tribe- 
mates  ;  for,  be  it  remembered,  birth  does  not  necessarily 
confer  personality ;  often  it  must  be  acquired  by  a  rec- 
ognized social  procedure. 

It  is  evident  that  in  such  vital  matters  as  acquiring  or 
losing  one's  self,  the  beliefs  and  sentiments  of  a  primitive 
group  wielded  absolute  authority  over  the  individual.  It 
is  equally  evident  that  those  folkways  and  rudimentary 
philosophy  served  as  the  wellspring  of  social  control  and 
social  order.     Therefore,  since  order  is  one  of  the  elements 


PRIMITIVE    NOTIONS    OF    THE    SELF  13 

in  any  concept  of  progress,  the  bearing  of  the  savage 
philosophy  of  the  self  upon  the  early  history  of  mankind 
is  apparent. 

But  for  our  purposes  it  is  even  more  important  to  find 
out  how  primitive  men  looked  upon  changes  in  the  self. 
This  whole  aspect  of  savage  life  can  be  summarized  in  the 
doctrine  of  nietarriiirphijsis,  as  it  forms  one  of  the  three 
cardinal  principles  of  primitive  naturcrphilosophy,  namely, 
that  all  is  possible,  that  all  isj:elated,  and  thaJ_alLchanges. 
The  second  of  these  principles  is  of  profound  significance ; 
for  it  meant  that  not  only  were  men  related  to  other  men, 
but  also  that  a  vague,  emotional  feeHng  of  community 
(based  upon  failure  to  mark  off  the  various  kingdoms  and 
forces  of  nature)  fused  and  identified  them  with  animals, 
with  stocks  and  stones  and  cosmic  powers.  This  'pathetic 
fallacy'  of  forcing  nature's  moods  and  powers  into  accord 
with  those  of  suffering  gods  and  heroes  is  as  old  as  real 
religion  and  literature,  and  still  remains  a  trump  card  for 
the  melodramatist  or  romantic  novelist.  But  to  the  primi- 
tive mind  it  was  much  more  vivid  and  compelling,  par- 
ticularly when  combined  with  the  idea  that  all  might  change. 
For  by  it  all  barriers  were  let  down  and  the  human  per- 
sonality became  so  fluid  that  this  could  become  that  or  the 
other  at  will :  man  is  transformable  into  buffaloes  or  wer- 
wolves, pigs,  deer,  paroquets,  or  churchbells ;  women  into 
pillars  of  salt,  laurel  trees,  or  lakes;  statues  or  ravens  into 
lovely  maidens ;  frogs  into  princes ;  dry  bones  become 
living  men  ;  St.  Januarius'  blood  hquefies  to  order  ;  human 
beings  mate  with  and  beget  animals  and  vice  versa;  cabbage 
and  parsley  beds  yield  human  babies.  Myth,  folklore, 
legend,  religious  dogma,  magic,  and  witch-baiting  all  unite 
in  testifying  to  this  common  behef  in  metamorphosis  ;  that 
is,  in  modifying  —  more  than  that,  in  revolutionizing  — 
human  nature.     The  legends  of  Pygmalion,  Circe,  Acteon, 


14  THEORIES    OF    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

the  Golden  Ass,  Proteus,  Apollo  and  Daphne,  and  Shake- 
speare's creation  of  Puck  are  but  a  few  classic  and  familiar 
outcroppings  of  this  rich  and  widespread  stratum  of  thought. 
The  same  idea  appears  in  the  miraculous  beliefs  about 
renewing  youth,  such  as  crystallized  in  the  legends  of  the 
Wandering  Jew,  Joseph  of  Arimathea,  and  the  'fountains 
of  youth.'     Initiation  ceremonies  and  early  dramatic  art 

|/also  testify  to  the  belief  that  real  transformations  of 
personality  are  possible.  It  is  significant  that  even  so  late 
as  Plato's  time  philosophers  could  fear  the  metamorphosis 
of  the  actor  into  his  role. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  recall  to  mind  such 
modern  survivals  of  belief  in  metamorphosis  as  the  change 

vin  personality  of  the  priest  when  he  dons  his  ecclesiastical 
\Tstments  ;  the  judge  when  he  put  on  his  robe  and  mounts 

*Jthe  bench;   the  convert  when  he  claims  ''entire  sanctifica- 

Jtion";   the  dogma  of  papal  infallibility  resulting  from  a 

^\/  mysterious  interchange  of  personality  between  the  pope 

/    and   the   Godhead  ;    the  soldier  with  his   '  f rightfulness ' ; 

t/      or  the  policeman  when  he  lays  aside  his  ordinary  humanity 

\        and  citizenship  to  become  the  'personification  of  the  law,' 

and  tells  you  with  shocking  naivete  that  he  tortures  a 

suspected  prisoner  not  as  a  man  but  as  an  officer. 

These  illustrations  from  the  history  of  human  nature 
yield  several  important  conclusions  on  the  methods  by  which 
our  sense  of  self  is  constructed.  In  the  first  place  we  must 
have  been  impressed  by  the  large  role  of  the  feelings  in 
coloring  primitive  perception  and  especially  perception 
of  the  self.  The  emotion  of  fear  begot  many  curious  and 
all  but  incredible  beliefs  about  metamorphosis.  The 
feeling  of  safety  derived  from  close  association  strengthened 
the  tendency  of  the  individual  to  merge  himself  in  his 
group.  Ignorance  of  the  scientific  order  of  nature,  errors 
in  seeing  and  hearing,  faulty  analogies  and  judgments,  all 


PRIMITIVE    NOTIONS    OF    THE    SELF  15 

conspired  to  suppress  sharp  dualisms  in  primitive  thought, 
and  promoted  in  particular  the  failure  to  distinguish 
rigidly  between  ego  and  alter.  This  was  largely  responsible 
for  early  communism  in  property  and  for  those  broad  defi- 
nitions of  kinship  which  merged  the  individual  into  his 
totem-clan,  family,  or  tribe.  That  is  to  say,  the  notion 
of  the  individual  soul  and  its  priceless  worth,  and  the  mili- 
tant sense  of  self  as  a  property  holder  were  characteristics 
lacking  in  early  men ;  hence  they  must  have  been  acquired 
in  the  course  of  comparatively  recent  religious  and  industrial 
evolution,  and  are  therefore  modifiable.  Moreover,  what- 
ever we  may  think  of  the  ways  in  which  belief  in  metamor- 
phosis has  expressed  itself,  it  is  quite  undeniable  that  the 
changes  in  human  character  and  circumstance  are  authentic 
and  cannot  be  repudiated.  They  yield  emphatic  affirmation 
upon  the  possibihty  of  molding  and  modifying  the  human 
self.  The  phenomena  of  religious  conversion  (the  broken 
and  contrite  heart,  the  miracle  of  tongues,  the  pulverized 
will  of  the  initiate,  "twice-born  men,"  etc.),  of  "double 
personality,"  of  hypnotic  suggestion,  or  even  of  more 
normal  and  commonplace  educational  experiences  indicate 
that  this  belief  may  still  retain  a  valid  place  in  our  thinking. 
Could  we  once  peer  into  the  depths  of  that  dim  valley,  the 
subconscious  self,  we  might  well  be  startled  at  the  un- 
dreamed-of possibilities  of  transformation.  But  the  final 
and  most  important  conclusion  from  the  ethnographic 
data  we  have  gathered  is  a  strong  hint  that  the  sense  of 
self  is  essentially  social  and  that  as  the  mind  is  a  working 
unity,  so  the  concept  of  self  reflects  this  totality  of  mind  — 
feehngs,  ideas,  desires,  percepts,  concepts;  and  is  con- 
trolled, shaped,  and  colored  by  it. 


i 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL  ANALYSIS    OF   THE   SELF 

Our  study  of  primitive  thought  and  customs  has  sug- 
gested that  the  self  is  not  a  fixed  or  static  quantity,  but  is  a 
variable,  depending  upon  the  whole  content  and  coloring 
of  the  mind  for  its  shape  and  texture.  Suppose  we  turn  to 
psychology  and  inquire  whether  it  supports  such  a  con- 
clusion. It  is  understood  that  we  are  not  concerned  here 
with  speculative  theology  and  its  identification  of  the 
immortal  God-given  soul  as  the  real  self  speaking  through 
'conscience'  to  our  other  selves,  which  are  really  not  us  in 
the  eternal  sense.  Remember  that  our  purpose  is  to  keep 
these  discussions  rigorously  objective.  We  might  begin  by 
setting  aside  the  old  metaphysical  notion  of  the  self  as 
expressed,  for  example,  by  Bishop  Butler:  "It  is  not  an 
idea,  or  abstract  notion,  or  quahty,  but  a  being  only,  which 
is  capable  of  life  and  action,  of  happiness  and  misery."^ 
To  be  sure  we  cannot  treat  such  a  concept  too  cavalierly, 
for  a  host  of  problems  psychological  and  sociological  seem  to 
demand  such  a  concept  for  their  solution.  For  example, 
can  evolution  account  for  the  separation  by  the  self  of 
itself  from  its  sensations?  In  other  words,  can  the  self 
have  evolved  out  of  simple  mechanical  reactions  upon 
exterior  stimuli ;  or  has  there  always  been  a  self-exist- 
ent spiritual  principle  distinct  from  the  impressions  and 

*  "Dissertation  of  Personal  Identity"  in  Bohn's  ed.  of  his  Analogy  and 
Sermons,  pp.  328-34. 

16 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF  THE    SELF        17 

sensations  it  receives  ?  Is  there  a  preestablished  conscious 
self,  anterior  to  all  sensation,  a  self-constituted  or  'injected' 
feeler  before  all  feeling? 

Ancient  Hindu  philosophy  answered,  yes.  "Know  the 
Self  to  be  sitting  in  the  chariot,  the  body  to  be  the  chariot, 
the  intellect  (Buddhi)  the  charioteer,  and  the  mind  the 
reins."  "Let  him  know  that  the  person  within  all  beings, 
not  heard  here,  not  reached,  not  thought,  not  subdued,  not 
seen,  not  understood,  not  classed,  but  hearing,  thinking, 
seeing,  classing,  sounding,  understanding,  knowing,  is  his 
Self."  1 

Thomas  Hill  Green  asserted  that  mere  sensation  could 
not  be  even  a  beginning  of  conscious  experience  to  the 
individual.^  For,  he  argues,  sensation  is  essentially  per- 
ception of  relation,  and  relation  implies  conscious  thought, 
a  thinker.  Nature,  he  says,  implies  a  non-natural  principle 
which  we  may  call  a  self -distinguishing  consciousness,  and 
which  cannot  be  subject  to  the  relations  it  establishes 
between  phenomena.  "If  we  were  merely  phenomena 
among  phenomena,  we  could  not  have  knowledge  of  a 
world  of  phenomena."  Human  experience  is  on  the  one 
hand  an  order  of  events,  on  the  other  a  consciousness  of  this 
order.  This  consciousness  cannot  itself  be  a  part  of  the 
process  of  nature.  (Man  cannot  lift  himself  by  his  boot- 
straps !)  In  his  chapter  on  the  Will,  he  applies  the  same 
method  to  distinguish  a  'want'  from  a  'wanter,'  a  'desire' 
or  impulse  to  satisfy  a  desire  from  a  'desirer ' ;  "  the  reflect- 
ing subject  traverses  the  series  of  wants  which  it  distin- 
guishes from  itself."  Yet  on  the  top  of  all  this.  Green 
denies  the  existence  of  a  'mysterious  entity'  called  the  Self. 
How  he  can  escape  it  I  am  unable  to  see.  For  what 
can  be  more    mysterious    than  an  eternal    self-knowing, 

^  Upanishads,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xv  :  12,  132-6,  163  ;  i :  263. 
^  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  pp.  47,  59,  90-100,  etc. 

c 


) 


1 8  THEORIES    OF    SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

I 

self-distinguishing  consciousness,  or  what  more  of  an 
entity  ? 

The  great  fallacy  here  seems  to  He  in  considering  sensa- 
*/  tions  or  perceptions  as  absolutely  discrete  solids  entering 
a  receptacle  as  bees  would  swarm  into  a  hive.  But  a 
sensation  is  not  alone  a  something- felt;  it  is j-lso  something 
which  feels. ^  Furthermore,  life  is  not  to  be  marked  off 
into  sensations,  perceptions,  thoughts,  desires,  will,  nervous 
ener^/  muscular  tissue,  metabolism,*  etc.,  as  the  green- 
grocer arranges  his  stock  of  fruits  and  vegetables  into 
piles.  It  is  a  dynamic  unity,  and  these  various  phenomena 
are  but  its  manifestations  as  they  appear  to  an  outside 
observer.  The  central  fact  is  that  whatever  is  alive,  feels 
and  knows  as  a  whole,  and  needs  no  special  injection  of  a 
self-conscious  ego  to  unify  and  direct  its  feeling  and  think- 
ing. We  grant  that  this  still  leaves  open  the  question  of  the 
self-conscious  feeling  of  the  self.  But  what,  may  we  ask, 
bestows  or  secures  to  the  self  its  sense  of  unity?  Is  it  a 
unity  of  perceptions-of-the-outside-world,  or  a  perception 
of  unity-of-activity  in  response  to  sensations  and  situations 
from  somewhere?  Is  it  the  feeling  of  a  "little  man"  inside 
of  us,  or  is  it  the  feeling  of  the  whole  organism  discharging 
itself  at  a  given  situation?  Does  the  amoeba  or  even  a 
higher  organism  perceive  a  bit  of  food  as  something  in  rela- 
tion to  itself  as  an  eternal,  self -regarding,  food-desiring 
entity,  or  does  it  get  its  notion  of  its  own  unity  from  a 
perception  of  its  own  unified  reflex  action  in  going  after  the 
food  ? 

It  appears  to  us  unquestionable  that  the  "self"  is  not 
some  mysterious  "little  man"  injected  or  inherited  as  a 

^  "  Each  has  only  to  ask  himself,  '  WTiat  do  I  know  myself  to  be  ?  '  And  if 
he  answer  honestly,  he  will,  I  think,  say  :  '  I  am  a  feeling  or  sensibility  modi- 
fied, in  innumerable  ways,  by  influences  which  I  do  not  originate.  These 
modifications,  when  grouped,  are  what  I  call  the  world,  or  wy  world,  for  I 
know  no  other.  I  am  the  sentient  unity  of  a  sensible  world.'  "  —  Thos. 
Davidson,  Educ.  Rev.,  xx  :  327. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF  THE    SELF         19 

distinct  entity,  but  that  it  is  a  developing  entity ;  that  it 
does  not  originally  possess  unity  but  attains  it  in  sofar 
as  the  circle  of  thought  is  organized,  not  disconnected.^ 
AiuT  this  circle  of  thought  is  unified  through  activity  and 
to  a  certain  extent  through  conscious  memory  of  activity. 
The  thread  of  personality,  of  selfhood,  which  connects 
our  past  with  our  present  and  gives  continuity  to  the  self, 
is  accomplishment  and  the  echoes  it  leaves  in  mind  and 
body ;  it  is  not  what  wejvere,  but  what  we  did.  The  self 
is  never_  an  absolute,  but  always  a  becoming.  It  is  as 
Bishop  Butler  himself  says,  "perception  by  memory," 
where  the  object  perceived  is  the  sum  of  past  perceptions  — 
the  past  perceiver  itself;  it  is  "self-participation  in  experi- 
ence." But  the  sources  of  personal  continuity  are  not 
confined  to  such  memory  echoes.  Our  selves  go  on  develop- 
ing and  our  past  experiences  continue  to  affect  us  even 
though  not  consciously  recalled. 

We  insist,  then,  that  the  self  as  an  independent  entity, 
savoring  of  the  Uncaused  Cause,  is  a  mere  abstraction  or 
symbol  without  any  foundation  in  reahty,  a  pure  assump- 
tion based  on  primitive  beliefs  about  the  soul,  and  a  relic 
of  the  days  when  so-called  mental  science  was  unilluminated 
by  psychology  or  sociology.  The  self,  the  ego,  is  simply  a 
derivative  from  conscious  hfe  itself.  We  are  in  thorough 
accord  here  with  Bergson,  Ward,  Mach,  and  other  psycholo- 
gists in  rejecting  the  old  theories  that  imagined  a  "formless 
ego,  indifferent  and  unchangeable,  on  which  it  threads  the 
psychic  states  which  it  has  set  up  as  independent  entities."  ^ 

*  Cf.  W.  Rein,  Outlines  of  Pedagogics  (transl.  Van  Liew),  p.  103. 

2  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  3-4.  Cf.  Ward,  Encycl.  Brit.,  9th  ed., 
vol.  XX,  p.  83,  note:  "Self  is  psychologically  a  product  of  thought,  not  a 
datum  of  sense."  Also  Ernst  Mach  :  "We  feel  that  the  real  pearls  of  life 
lie  in  the  ever  changing  contents  of  consciousness,  and  that  the  person  is 
merely  an  indifferent  symbolical  thread  on  which  they  are  strung  "  {Popular 
Scientific  Lectures,  3d  ed.  transl.  pp.  234-5). 


y 


20  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Lest  we  lose  our  way  in  a  fog  of  metaphysics,  let  us  now 
turn  to  psychology  for  more  precise  definitions  of  the 
processes  involved  in  self-building  and  for  illustrations  of 
the  principles  which  we  have  already  laid  down.  The  older 
theologians,  metaphysicians,  and  metaphysical  psychologists 
held  firmly  to  the  persistent  sense  of  personal  identity  as  the 
basis  for  belief  in  the  eternal  ego  as  the  real  self.  But  the 
newer  psychologists  tell  us  that  self  is  simply  one  among  a 
multitude  of  presentations  to  consciousness,  though  dis- 
tinguished, it  is  true,  by  unique  interest,  relative  persistence, 
activity,  self-knowledge,  etc.  We  reach  flagrant  heterodoxy 
in  the  doctrine  that  the  final  basis  of  the  self  lies  in  sense 
of  one's  body  —  in  somatic  consciousness.  "The  earliest 
and  to  the  last  the  most  important  element  in  self  ...  is 
that  variously  styled  the  organic  sensations,  vital  sense, 
coenaesthesis,  or  somatic  consciousness.  This  largely  deter- 
mines the  tone  of  the  special  sensations  and  enters,  though 
little  suspected,  into  all  our  higher  feelings.  ...  As  soon 
as  definite  perception  begins,  the  body  as  an  extended 
thing  is  distinguished  from  other  bodies,  and  such  organic 
>  sensations  as  can  be  localized  at  all  are  localized  within  it. 
•  .  .  The  body  then  first  of  all  gives  to  self  a  certain 
measure  of  individuality,  permanence,  and  inwardness."  '• 
"It  is  the  organic  sense,  the  sense  of  the  body,  usually 
vague  and  obscure,  but  at  times  very  clear  in  all  of  us,  that 
constitutes  for  each  animal  the  basis  of  its  psychic  in- 
dividuahty."  ^ 

David  Starr  Jordan  carries  the  'somatic'  theory  to  its 
extreme  limit.  "So  far  as  the  evidence  goes,  we  know  of  no 
ego  except  that  which  arises  from  the  coordination  of  the 

^  Ward,  /.  c,  pp.  83-4. 

^  Ribot,  Diseases  of  Personality  (Open  Court  ed.),  pp.  18-19;  cf.  p.  22, 
where  he  speaks  of  "this  general  sense  of  the  body,"  and  of  "this  confused 
feeling  of  life  .  .  .  which  by  incessant  repetition  has  become  ourselves." 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF    THE    SELF      21 

nerve  cells.  All  consciousness  is  'colonial  consciousness,' 
the  product  of  cooperation.  .  .  .  The  /  in  man  is  the 
expression  of  the  co-working  of  the  processes  and  impulses 
of  the  brain.  The  brain  is  made  of  individual  cells,  just 
as  England  is  made  of  individual  men.  To  say  that  Eng- 
land wills  a  certain  deed  or  owns  a  certain  territory,  or 
thinks  a  certain  thought,  is  no  more  a  figure  of  speech  than 
to  say  that  'I  will,'  'I  own,'  or  'I  think.'  The  England 
is  the  expression  of  union  of  the  individual  wills  and  thoughts 
and  ownerships  of  Enghshmen.  Similarly  my  ego  is  the 
expression  of  the  aggregate  force  resulting  from  coordina- 
tion of  the  elements  that  make  up  my  body."  ^ 

What  do  these  facts  argue  concerning  the  sense  of  self? 
It  is  certainly,  to  say  the  least,  a  neghgible  quantity,  a  very 
shiftless  Bo-Peep  sort  of  an  ego,  or  a  very  apathetic,  hstless 
one,  if  in  spite  of  its  eternal  and  self-distinguishing  nature 
it  requires  bodily  sensations  to  wake  it  and  set  it  going. 
But  does  this  prove  that  if  the  self  springs  from,  and  to  a 
certain  degree  remains  colored  by,  bodily  sensations,  it  must 
always  remain  the  subject  or  captive  of  these  sensations  ?  ^ 
Analogies  are  dangerous,  but  it  is  not  wholly  metaphorical  to 
consider  that  the  self  may  build  itself  up  with  a  scaffolding 

^  Footnotes  to  Evolution,  271-2.  I  am  aware  that  psychologists  are  still 
not  at  one  on  whether  single  cells  in  complex  organisms  are  conscious. 

2  Christian  Scientists  would,  of  course,  say  no.  A  typical  expression  of 
their  position  occurs  recently  in  a  letter  of  Mr.  Frederick  Dixon  to  the 
Scvenoaks  Chronicle:  "A  man  .  .  .  might  have  been  dropped  as  a  child 
and  had  his  spine  injured.  By  the  time  he  is  forty  or  fifty,  the  belief  of 
curvature  of  the  spine  has  become  an  actual  part  of  his  human  mentality. 
It  might  take  him  years  to  get  rid  of  this  belief  though  there  is  no  reason  why 
it  should  take  him  five  minutes."  The  study  of  the  effect  of  mind  upon 
body  is  being  seriously  undertaken  by  many  broad  gauge  modern  physicians. 
See,  for  example,  Doctor  Richard  Cabot's  plea  for  psychology  in  medical 
and  social  work,  in  National  Conference  of  Charities  and  Correction,  191 5, 
pp.  220-6.  For  a  striking  example  of  how  an  idea  may  cause  blindness 
while  the  eye  and  optic  nerve  are  organically  perfect  and  intact,  see  Pearce 
Bailey,  M.  D.,  "The  Wishful  Self,"  Scribncr^s  Magazine,  July,  1915,  PP- 
115-21. 


22  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

of  bodily  sensations  and  later  tear  away  the  scaffolding  and 
subsist  on  its  own  habitual  coherence.  How  far  we  can 
dispense  with  such  scaffoldings  it  is  impossible  to  declare. 
We  cannot  here  follow  out  this  idea  to  its  logical  sequence, 
namely,  the  problem  of  immortahty  and  whether  there  could 
be  a  coherent  person,  mind,  self,  without  a  body.  We  must 
confess  humbly  that  we  do  not  know ;  though  it  is  possible 
that  mind  and  body  are  not  so  absolutely  parallel  as  we 
are  in  the  habit  of  beheving,  and  that  the  mind,  having 
wrung  the  body  dry  of  its  resources,  having  cKmbed  to  the 
top  of  its  body-ladder,  may  calmly  and  unregretfully  kick 
over  the  ladder  and  march  away  on  other  planes  of  experi- 
ence. "And  as  a  goldsmith,  taking  a  piece  of  gold,  turns 
it  into  another,  newer  and  more  beautiful  shape,  so  does 
this  self,  after  having  thrown  off  this  body  and  dispelled 
all  ignorance,  make  unto  himself  another,  newer  and  more 
beautiful  shape."  ^ 

But  until  we  attain  this  transcendent  state,  so  long  as 
we  are  bound  to  the  wheel,  the  warp  of  our  "self"  will  be 
spun  from  bodily  sensations.  Hence  variations  in  the  body 
will  alter  materially  the  constitution  of  the  self.  What 
becomes,  then,  of  the  eternal  self?  Well,  it  turns  out  to 
be  a  very  temporal,  variable  thing,  not  at  all  supra-mun- 
dane, nor  shrouded  in  traihng  clouds  of  mystery. 

The  truth  is  that  the  self  is  constantly  changing.  Indeed, 
in  this  regard  the  mind  seems  to  resemble  a  nominating 
convention  ;  now  A  has  a  certain  plurality,  now  B,  now  C, 
again  A  ;  with  the  exception  that  when  A  or  B  reappear  in 
the  ballotings,  they  are  no  longer  A  or  B,  but  A  or  B  plus 
the  intervening  experience.  This  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that 
the  Hfe  process  is  a  constant  unfolding  or  a  sweUing  stream. 
We  repeat,  that  at  any  given  moment  the  self  is  merely  a 
'working   majority'   of   our   multifarious   possible   selves, 

1  Upanishads,  S.  B.  of  the  E.,  xv,  176. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF    THE    SELF       23 

that  is,  of  our  various  ideas,  feelings,  etc.  The  great 
thinker,  the  dominant  self,  is  merely  the  algebraic  sum  of 
the  various  thoughts  (thinkers),  habits,  memories,  etc., 
that  make  up  the  mind  and  body  at  any  given  instant. 
That  is  what  M.  Ribot  means  by  the  human  person  as  a 
coalition,  "a  whole  by  coalition,  the  extreme  complexity  of 
which  veils  from  us  its  origin,  and  the  origin  of  which  would 
remain  impenetrable  if  the  existence  of  elementary  forms  did 
not  throw  some  light  upon  the  mechanism  of  that  fusion."  ' 
Yet  we  must  not  be  so  carried  away  with  our  analogies 
as  to  forget  that  life  is  a  whole,  that  the  mind  is  a  working 
unity  —  when  normal  —  and  that  ideas  are  not  imprisoned 
birds  in  an  aviary,  to  use  a  classic  figure.  We  might  express 
this  warning  diagrammatically.  The  concept  of  the  self  we 
have  is  rather  that  of  a  bulge  in  an  organic  whole,  something 
after  the  plan  in  diagram  A.  In  spite  of  what  we  seem  to 
have  written,  our  concept  of  the  self  is  not  that  of  thought 
grains  clustering  about  magnetic  centers,  as  in  diagram  B. 


S  represents  the  self  at  this  present  moment  in  consciousness;  S'  one  of 
many  possible  selves  below  the  threshold  of  consciousness. 

It  would  be  an  exaggeration,  however,  to  assert  that  the 
self  is  a  Hteral  unity  in  the  sense  of  being  a  persistent  core 
of  matter  or  thought.  For  even  the  normal  ego  has  little 
unity  of  cohesion.     We  are  all  bundles  of  habits,  tendencies, 

^  Op.  cit.,  3 ;  cf.  p.  82  :  "The  ego  is  a  coherent  group  in  the  midst  of  the 
processes  that  assail  it." 


24  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

contradictions,  oppositions,  of  every  variety  of  shade, 
texture,  and  capacity  for  combination.  The  great  bloom- 
ing, buzzing  confusion  of  the  outer  world  has  more  or  less 
of  a  counterpart  within  us.  Hence  must  arrive  those 
variations  and  contradictions  in  personality  which  have 
been  called  successive  attitudes  of  the  ego,  or  "partial 
scissions  of  the  ego."  ^  It  is  probably  not  too  much  to  say 
that  most  of  the  fallacies  into  which  economic  and  poHtical 
theorists  have  fallen  in  their  discussions  of  human  nature 
are  referable  to  mistaking  one  of  the  attitudes  of  the  ego 
for  the  dominant  ego,  or  the  whole  ego ;  and  the  theorist 
usually  selects  the  attitude  most  favorable  to  his  own  bias 
of  mind.  To  each  of  the  phases  of  the  ego  we  find  it  con- 
venient to  tack  some  general  name.  Economic  Man, 
Family  Man,  PoHtical  Man,  Soldier,  God's  Man.  To  each 
of  these  selves  —  and  we  each  have  them  all  more  or  less  — 
correspond  a  set  of  mores,  customs,  laws,  and  frequently  a 
system  of  education.  But  neither  in  our  analysis  of  the 
individual  nor  of  society  should  we  take  one  of  these 
phases  as  the  person,  as  the  social  fact,  as  the  essential  mark 
of  human  nature. 

The  problem  is  still  further  complicated  by  the  fact  that 
our  conscious  personality  is  never  more  than  a  feeble  part 
of  our  total  personality.  The  much  exploited "  subcon- 
scious self"  is  only  a  half-truth ;  it  would  be  much  nearer 
the  truth  to  say  that  within  submerged  or  subconscious 
mind  there  are  many  potential  selves. 
/-  There  are,  too,  certain  organic  rhythms  which  add  to 

^  Cf.  for  variations  of  personality  in  the  normal  self,  Paulhan,  Rev.  Philo- 
sophiqiie,  June,  1882.  That  such  variations  are  normal  is  the  apparent 
conclusion  of  modern  experimental  genetics.  Works  like  Lock's  Recent 
Progress  in  the  Study  of  Variation  Heredity  and  Evolution  and  T.  H.  Mor- 
gan's Critique  of  the  Theory  of  Evolution  emphasize  the  fact  that  an  indi- 
vidual is  no  longer  considered  as  a  unit  in  biology  but  as  "  a  mosaic  of 
independent  unit  characters,  each  inherited  separately  and  with  marked 
definiteness." 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF    THE    SELF       25 

our  sum  of  impulses,  dispositions,  habits,  and  leading  ideas, 
and  which  vary  the  character  of  our  bouquet  of  selves. 
We  have,  for  example,  a  nutrition-self,  which  in  normal 
persons  seems  to  diminish  from  the  period  of  infancy 
onward.  The  epicure  carries  a  larger  share  of  this  baby 
food-self  than  the  normal  individual ;  the  ascetic,  an  abnor- 
mally small  share.  Then  we  have  a  sexual  personahty 
which  varies  extraordinarily.  It  is  apparently  absent  in 
infancy,  and  springs  up  only  at  puberty,  though  certain 
modern  investigators  claim  to  find  quite  definite  manifesta- 
tions of  the  sex-self  in  very  tender  years.  But  we  are  per- 
fectly assured  of  its  appearance  at  puberty.  And  so  power- 
ful is  this  new-born  "sexual  character"  that  it  frequently 
dominates  and  overshadows  all  the  others ;  witness  the 
variety  of  puberty  disturbances  of  mind  and  body,  the 
vagaries  of  adolescent  conduct,  etc.,  noted  by  Hall  and  other 
observers.  But  these  phenomena,  which  we  might  call 
crises  in  personality  or  in  the  history  of  the  self,  are  by  no 
means  confined  to  youth ;  a  bewildering  variety  of  erotic 
disturbances  in  adults  testify  to  the  explosive  metamor- 
phosis of  character  wrought  by  sex  experiences.  Mr. 
Wells'  New  MacUavelli  and  Butler's  Way  of  All  Flesh  yield 
excellent  examples  of  this  sudden  outbreak  and  domination 
of  the  sexual  self.  The  connection  between  organic  modifi- 
cations and  mental  changes  is  evident  enough  in  such  cases. 
But  even  more  striking  are  the  mental  effects  of  such  physi- 
cal crises  as  castration.  Several  writers  (Ribot,  Maudsley, 
Tarde,  etc.)  state  that  castration  in  men  and  animals  effects 
a  notable  change  in  character  and  personality.  Hermaph- 
roditism further  illustrates  this  connection.  It  indi- 
cates a  lack  of  physical  balance.  We  are  told  that  it  is 
marked  also  by  lack  of  balance  in  the  person  or  character, 
for  hermaphrodites  are  observed  to  alternate  between 
masculine  and  feminine  character. 


26  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

As  a  final  illustration  we  might  adduce  the  metamor- 
phosis of  the  ego  of  insane  persons  due  to  physical  disturb- 
ances. Ribot  repeats  a  typical  case.  An  insane  woman 
of  Charenton  with  a  very  distinguished  and  gifted  mind, 
would  change  from  day  to  day  in  person,  condition  and 
even  sex.  "At  one  time  she  would  be  a  princess  of  royal 
blood,  betrothed  to  an  emperor ;  at  another  time  a  woman 
of  the  people  and  democratic ;  today  married  and  enceinte; 
tomorrow  once  more  a  maiden.  It  would  even  come  upon 
her  at  times  to  be  a  man."  Ribot  insists  that  such  patho- 
logic alterations  of  personahty  are  genuine.  When  a 
patient  maintains  he  is  changed  or  transformed,  "he  is 
right,  notwithstanding  the  denials  or  hilarity  of  his  friends. 
It  is  impossible  for  him  to  feel  himself  differently,  as  his 
consciousness  is  simply  the  expression  of  his  organic  state. 
Subjectively  he  is  not  the  sport  of  an  illusion ;  he  is  merely 
what  he  ought  to  be."  ^  In  addition  to  such  transforma- 
tions or  alterations  of  personality  we  have  to  reckon  with 
cases  in  which  the  ego  is  absolutely  lost.  For  instance, 
Hack  Tuke  cited  the  case  of  a  patient  who  for  several  years 
was  an  inmate  of  Bedlam.  This  patient  had  lost  his  ego 
(that  is,  the  one  famihar  to  him)  and  was  in  the  habit  of 
hunting  for  himself  under  the  bed.^  Somewhat  similar 
are  the  cases  of  loss  of  the  self  as  a  center  of  reference  for 
sensations  of  pain  or  pleasure.  We  have  already  observed 
among  primitive  men  this  failure  to  refer  sensations  to  the 
feehng  ego.  Dickens  in  Hard  Times  furnishes  a  fictive 
example  in  the  death  of  Mrs.  Gradgrind : 

"Are  you  in  pain,  dear  mother?" 

"I  think  there's  a  pain  somewhere  in  the  room,"  said  Mrs.  Grad- 
grind, "but  I  couldn't  positively  say  that  I  have  got  it." 

'  Ribot.  op.  cit.,  59,  55;  Cf.  Dr.  Southard's  remarkable  collection  of 
similar  cases  in  Contributions  of  Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Insanity, 
No.  47,  1915. 

2  Journal  Mental  Science,  April,  1882. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF    THE    SELF       27 

Insane  patients  frequently  attribute  to  others  the  sounds 
they  utter  themselves,  and  complain  of  being  disturbed  by 
their  cries.  Others  are  victims  of  compeUing  "voices" 
which  seem  to  come  from  without.  Still  others  lose  the 
reference  for  their  own  physical  needs.  A  case  is  reported 
of  an  old  man  whose  faculties  were  extremely  enfeebled, 
and  who  had  the  habit  of  constantly  imputing  his  own  sensa- 
tions to  the  people  who  surrounded  him.  "Thus  he  would 
say  to  his  keeper  and  the  assistants  that  he  was  sure  they  were 
hungry  or  thirsty.  He  was  subject  to  violent  fits  of  coughing. 
After  each  paroxysm  he  would  resume  the  thread  of  his 
conversation,  but  only  after  having  expressed  in  appropriate 
terms  how  sorry  he  was  to  perceive  the  sad  state  of  his 
friends'  health.  "  I  am  grieved, "  he  would  say,  "  to  see  you 
suffering  from  such  a  painful  and  exhausting  cough."  "  ^ 

It  will  have  been  noted  that  I  have  said  nothing  about 
"double  personality"  or  "multiple  personality."  The 
reason  is  that  they  do  not  constitute  separate  categories  of 
the  variable  self.  Reference  to  what  has  been  already  said 
repeatedly  about  the  multifarious  potential  selves  which 
constitute  our  personality  or  character,  and  another  glance 
at  diagram  A  will  sufficiently  explain  double  personahty. 
It  will  thus  appear  only  as  a  special  variation  of  the  general 
case.  The  '  double '  is  simply  one  of  the  many  other  possible 
selves  which  has  attained  a  considerable  degree  of  coherence 
and,  as  it  were,  remains  suspended  in  the  subconscious  until 
a  favorable  somatic  variation  enables  it  to  pop  into  the 
place  of  the  reigning  self.  Another  organic  revolution 
will  in  turn  hurl  it  from  the  throne.  The  anaesthesia 
existing  between  the  rival  personahties  need  not  detain  us 
here  as  it  has  no  particular  bearing  on  the  general  process.^ 

^  Cited  from  Hunter  by  Ribot,  p.  132  ;  for  other  cases  from  French  sources 
see  ibid.,  127-31. 

2  The  case  of  Rev.  T.  C.  Hanna,  described  by  Sidis  and  Goodhart  in  their 
Multiple  Personality,  pp.  81-226,  illustrates  many  of  the  points  brought  out 


28  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Another  interesting  phase  of  this  problem  suggests  itself, 
but  cannot  here  be  followed  up.     Put  into  the  form  of   a 
question  it  is  this  :  Would  multiple  personality  in  any  way 
account  for  the  curious  explanations  which  primitive  men 
offer  for  changes  in  personality  ?     Can  it  be  that  our  minds 
may  split  themselves  up  into,  say,  critical,  credulous,  alert, 
passive  personalities,  corresponding  to  some  lines  of  cleav- 
age as  yet  undiscovered?     Would  such  a  theory  account 
for  the  "water-tight  compartments"  which  some  men  are 
accused  of  having  set  up  in  their  minds  ?     There  is  a  strong 
temptation  at  this  point  to  loose  rein  and  canter  over  into 
C^      the  field  of  metaphysics,  for  it  has  been  suggested  that  such 
^      a  cleavage  in  the  Infinite  Personality  might  account  for  the 
Vs       problem  of  evil. 

>■  What  after  all  is  the  '  identity  of  the  ego '  ?     It  is  simply 

J      a  question  of  quantity,  of  potential  rather  than  actual  unity 

Q       or  identity.     "Identity  persists  so  long  as  the  sum  of  the 

\      states  that  remain  relatively  fixed  is  greater  than  the  sum 

iU-  of  the  states  that  are  added  to  or  detached  from  this  stable 

\  T  group."  ^     Am  I  one  person,  then,  or  many?     Am  I  in 

my  essential  nature  under  the  despotism  of  a  single  self? 

Or,  at  the  other  antipode,  am  I  the  victim  of  the  most 

exaggerated  sort  of  anarchy  and  mobocracy?     Or  is  my 

mental  Ufe  a  combination  of  the  two  into  a  well-balanced 

Umited  monarchy  ?    The  latter  metaphor  seems  to  represent 

the  relation  of  the  self  to  the  entire  content  of  the  mind  as 

nearly  as  a  phase  of  Hfe  lends  itself  to  a  symbol  of  language. 

in  this  chapter  —  organic  unity,  functional  dissociation,  struggle  between 
rival  selves,  sudden  alternations  between  selves ;  it  also  illustrates  with 
startling  clearness  the  lack  of  dualism  in  primitive  minds :  see  particularly 
p.  ii6.  Boodin  {Am.  Jour.  Sociol.  19  :  22)  observes  :  "What  the  pathologi- 
cal cases  bring  out  is  that  normally  the  so-called  individual  self  is  in  reality  a 
colony  of  selves,  an  integration  of  systems  of  tendencies,  fusing  more  or  less 
into  a  common  field  and  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  dominated  by  a  common 
purpose." 

^  Ribot,  /.  c,  28. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    ANALYSIS    OF    THE    SELF       29 

But  whatever  the  identity  or  unity  of  the  ego  is,  the 
problem,  or  situation,  and  our  response  to  it  are  the  means 
by  which  identity  and  unity  are  achieved  or  conferred.  A 
certain  constancy  of  situations,  problems,  needs  {e.g.  food 
or  sex)  begets  certain  pretty  uniform  responses.  This 
uniformity  of  response  when  consciously  felt  constitutes 
our  habitual  selves.  Thus  habit  or  some  dominant  idea 
forms  what  we  have  sometimes  called  a  'nodule  of  self- 
hood.' Psychologically  this  means  that  personaHty  in- 
volves some  sort  of  psychic  tension  the  lowering  of  which 
dissolves  the  unity  of  personaHty.  Practically  this  tension 
mayjje  conceived  of  as  purpose  or  motive. 

What  do  we  extract,  then,  as  the  net  results  of  psychology 
for  our  discussion  of  the  Self  in  human  nature  ?  In  the  first 
place,  we  are  any  number  of  possible  personalities  or  selves. 
Our  selves  are  constantly  changing.  To  recall  a  single 
example,  puberty  completely  reorientates  our  selves.  Our 
self  is  at  any  given  moment  only  a  sort  of  organic  coalition, 
a  tacit  working  unity.  The  study  of  normal  and  pathologic 
minds  among  our  own  people,  and  the  comparative  study 
of  tribal  mentality  agree  in  the  suggestion  that  "the  logical 
unity  of  the  thinking  subject,  which  is  taken  for  granted  by 
the  majority  of  philosophers,  is  rather  a  desideratum  than  a 
fact."  There  is  in  all  normal  individuals  a  certain  basis  in 
the  somatic  consciousness  for  a  persistent  sense  of  the  self. 
But  this  of  itself  is  manifestly  insufficient  to  yield  that 
habitual  coherence  of  the  personality  necessary  to  confront 
society  and  the  world  with  equanimity.  For  a  man  may 
lose  his  arms  or  legs,  or  other  members,  without  any 
abridgment  of  his  sense  of  self.  Furthermore,  recent  de- 
velopments in  mental  therapeutics  and  hypnotism  prove 
that  what  we  might  call  the  '  suggested  self '  can  dominate 
and  change  bodily  sensations ;  hence,  as  it  were,  recreate 
somatic  consciousness  according  to  a  pattern  suggested 


30  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

either  from  without  or  within.  The  real  basis  for  the 
solidarity  and  permanence  of  the  core  or  nodule  of  selfhood 
appears  to  lie  in  uniform  reactions  upon  certain  situations. 
These  situations  or  problems  are  not  mere  food  questions, 
belly  problems.  Responses  to  such  situations  yield  only 
a  general  or  vegetative  sense  of  self  and  not  the  highly 
specialized  self  of  human  nature.  Apparently  social  situa- 
tions and  problems  alone  could  develop  such  a  self.  And  the 
reason,  in  psychological  terms,  is  that  this  idea  of  the  self 
as  a  member  of  a  coherent  group  becomes  a  dominant  and 
unifying  idea  in  all  normal  persons.  It  is  the  social  self, 
then,  that  is  the  predominant  self  (at  least  for  the  practical 
administrator) ,  and  it  is  participation  in  the  give-and-take 
of  social  Hfe  that  unifies  consciousness  into  selfhood. 

This  principle  suggests  a  variety  of  fascinating  problems. 
Are  men,  as  Lombroso  thought,  by  nature  either  conserva- 
tive or  progressive  ?  Are  we  the  blind  victims  of  bhnd  Fate 
—  Heredity  ?  Is  it  all  a  question  of  temperament  or  phys- 
iology? Do  I  get  my  notion  of  myself  as  a  conservative 
from  my  grandfather,  from  my  mother's  body,  or  from  my 
actual  experiences  ?  Can  the  leopard  not  change  his  spots  ? 
Are  my  radical  spots  dyed  in  or  am  I  a  chameleon  ?  Am  I 
born  with  a  rigid  "set"  to  my  mind,  and  therefore  to  my 
self,  or  do  I  acquire  my  "set"  from  social  contacts  and 
experiences?  If  social  activity  unifies  our  consciousness 
into  a  coherent  and  permanent  sense  of  the  social  self, 
will  a  certain  t\^e  of  activity  produce  a  certain  typical 
sense  of  self?  Will,  for  example,  cooperative  activity  in 
home  or  schoolroom  develop  a  self  that  thinks  of  itself  as  a 
cooperator  ?  Such  are  the  problems  which  the  psychologi- 
cal interpretation  of  the  self  raises  but  does  not  answer. 
Sociology,  or  perhaps  better,  social  psychology  alone  seems 
in  a  position  to  answer  them. 


CHAPTER   IV 

SELF  AS   A   SOCIAL  PRODUCT 

"No  man  can  take  a  walk,  without  bringing  home  an  influence 
on  his  eternity."     (Jean  Paul) 

"Nothing  can  injure  a  man  who  is  a  member  of  a  community 
which  does  not  injure  the  community."     (Marcus  AureHus) 

The  mind  of  the  ne\v-born  child  is  not  a  tabula  rasa  as 
the  empiric  psychologists  were  prone  to  beheve.  But,  in 
truth,  so  little  is  written  thereon,  the  ink  so  pale,  the  char- 
acters so  fragmentary,  that  the  tabula,  for  any  purposes 
of  Hfe,  is  Uttle  better  than  some  torn  and  faded  manu- 
script unless  the  characters  be  brought  out,  the  writing 
completed.  What,  in  the  case  of  the  child's  mind,  is  this 
bringer-out  or  completer  of  the  writing?  Speaking  popu- 
larly it  is  experience ;  speaking  scientifically  it  is  social 
heredity.  But  what  is  social  heredity?  It  is  the  process 
by  which  the  stock  of  incomplete  instincts  and  tendencies 
secured  to  the  individual  by  natural  selection  is  completed, 
strengthened,  shaped,  and  matured.  In  other  words,  it  is 
the  process  by  which  the  individual  who  arrives  into  the 
world  with  only  a  very  incomplete  kit  of  rude  hfe-tools  is 
enabled  to  fill  up  his  kit  with  sharp  tools  which  he  knows 
how  to  use,  and  to  go  on  his  way  equipped  in  the  struggle 
for  life.  Briefly,  it  is  education  conceived  in  its  widest 
sense^  It  is  a  social  process,  tlic  social  process.  This  is 
what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  the  human  mind  is  a  social 
product. 

But  if  this  is  true  of  the  mind  as  a  whole,  it  is,  if  possible, 

31 


,  32  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

even  truer  of  that  phase  of  mind  called  the  "self"  or  the 
person.  For  all  the  time  I  am  creating  or  building  a  mind 
I  am  building  a  world,  and  in  and  by  the  same  process  I  am 
evolving  a  self.  I  cannot  mark  myself  off  from  my  world  ; 
I  am  only  thinkable  in  terms  of  it,  and  vice  versa.  I  am 
not  apart  from  it;  /  am  my  world.  "We  usually  set  our- 
selves over  against  our  world,  as  if  we  were  one  thing  and 
it  another ;  but  the  truth  is,  the  two  are  one ;  our  world 
is  wholly  our  feeling,  wholly  subjective,  except  in  so  far  as 
we  place  hypothetical  essences  behind  different  groups  of 
our  feelings,  thereby  transforming  them  into  things.".^ 
Walt  Whitman  said  almost  the  last  word  on  this  point  in 
his  poem,  "  There  was  a  child  went  forth." 

The  world  with  which  we  are  identified,  which  is  our 
"self,"  is,  however,  not  a  world  of  atoms  and  ions,  vortexes 
of  motion,  cosmic  dust  and  all  the  other  apparatus  of 
physics  and  chemistry.  Our  world  is  a  world  of  persons, 
and  only  very  incidentally  a  world  of  things.  If  man  is 
endogenous,  as  Emerson  insisted,  he  only  knows  it  be- 
cause he  has  compared  notes  and  finds  every  other  person 
growing  in  the  same  way.  We  are  all  world  builders,  true ; 
but  our  worlds  hold  together  only  for  the  reason  that,  like 
the  ancients,  we  build  human  beings  into  foundations  and 
walls.  Foes  and  friends  alike  are  worked  in.  We  differ 
from  the  ancient  builders,  however,  in  this  particular,  that 
while  they  tossed  in  only  now  and  again  a  living  body,  we 
use  nothing  else  for  our  worlds ;  stone,  mortar  and  all  are 
Hving,  throbbing  flesh.  To  quit  the  metaphor,  experience, 
and  preeminently  experience  of  persons,  furnishes  the 
materials  for  our  world  and  for  our  selves.^ 

^  T.  Davidson,  Educ.  Rev.,  xx:  327. 

2  Cf.  Ward,  Encyl.  Brit.,  gth  ed.,  vol.  xx,  p.  84;  Howison,  The  Limits  of 
Evolution,  359:  "Our  self-thought  being  is  intrinsically  a  social  being;  the 
existence  of  each  is  reciprocal  with  the  existence  of  the  rest,  and  is  not  think- 
able in  any  other  way." 


SELF  AS   A  SOCIAL   PRODUCT  33 

"Der  Mensch  erkennt  sich  nur  im  Menschen,  nur 
Das  Leben  Ichret  jedem  was  er  sei." 

(Goethe,  Tasso,  Act  2,  Sc.  3) 

Through  the  "us"  we  learn  of  the  "me." 

It  is  difficult  to  say  at  precisely  what  point  self  and 
world-building  commences.  But  probably  the  unborn 
child  has  made  a  start  in  laying  his  foundations,  of  which 
his  first  faint  stirrings  may  be  taken  as  the  index.  Feelings 
of  comfort  and  discomfort,  sensations  of  movement,  begin 
to  be  correlated  with  or  distinguishedirom-dim-sensations 


of  pressure,  resistance,  perhaps  even  taste  and  other  forms 
of  contact.  This  dim  dawning  of  the  self  we  have  already 
summed  up  under  the  term  somatic  consciousness.  Who- 
ever prefers  to  use  the  term  self-instinct  is  at  perfect 
liberty  to  do  so,  though  instinct  is  such  a  vague  omnibus 
expression  that  it  may  mean  everything  or  nothing. 

The  first  glimmering  of  a  world  the  child  learns  as  part 
of  hisjnotherVbody.  The  social  process  has  begun.  But 
immediately  upon  his  separation  from  the  mother's  flesh 
his  world  grows ;  a  huge,  vague,  whirling,  chaotic  world  to 
be  sure,  but  a  world  which  soon  begins  to  take  on  more 
definite  form,  substance,  and  meaning.  Now  the  curtain 
rises  upon  the  great  drama  which  with  Baldwin  we  may 
entitle  the  "Dialertir  of  Mental  Development."  Like  the 
Chinese  plays,  this  drama  is  a  real  continuous  performance, 
a  cycle  wherein  one  day's  playing  writes  the  next  day's 
action.  But  the  unique  quaUty  of  this  drama  is, that  sper- 
tators  unite  with  the  child  who  plays  the  title  role.  You 
and  I,  everybody  within  range,  are  pressed  into  service. 
There  are  no  supernumeraries.  The  young  actor  in  his 
evolution-play  casts  us  all  and  practices  with  or  upon  us. 
As  he  begins  to  practice  or  correlate  his  experience  with 
persons  through  activity,  to  establish  by  imitation  a 
common  center  of  reference,  his  sense  of  self  emerges. 


34  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

"The  baby  new  to  earth  and  sky,  .  .  . 
Has  never  thought  that  'this  is  I' ; 
But  as  he  grows  he  gathers  much, 
And  learns  the  use  of  'I'  and  'me,' 
And  finds  'I  am  not  what  I  see, 
And  other  than  the  things  I  touch'; 
So  rounds  he  to  a  separate  mind 
From  whence  clear  memory  may  begin, 
And  thro'  the  frame  that  binds  him  in 
His  isolation  grows  defined." 

(Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  XLIV) 

Tennyson  seems  here  to  see  the  self  emerging  by  a  sense 
of  difference.  Professor  Howison  expresses  the  same  thing 
philosophically.  To  him  the  spirit  is  intrinsically  indi- 
vidual ;  it  is  itself,  and  not  any  other.  "  But  such  a  getting 
to  exact  identity  can  only  be  by  means  of  difference;  and 
difference,  again,  impHes  contrast,  and  9,nrefr,rr.nop,  tn  nthpra. 
Thus  in  thinking  itself  as  externally  real,  each  spirit  in- 
herently thinks  the  reahty  of  all  other  spirits."  ^  But  are 
the  poet  and  philosopher,  after  all,  right  in  making  sense 
of  difference  the  method  of  self-realization  ?  Were  not  the 
savages  in  their  crude  philosophy  of  identity  nearer  right? 
That  is  to  say,  are  not  comparison  and  a  resultant  sense  of 
similarity  equally  valid  if  not  more  valid  principles  of  self- 
building?  The  philosopher  seems  to  recognize  this,  for 
elsewhere  he  says :  "That  a  mind  conscious  of  itself  as  a 
self,  means  at  the  least  that  it  discriminates  itself  from 
others,  but  therefore  that  it  also  refers  its  own  defuiing 
conception  to  others,  —  is  in  relation  with  them,  as  un- 
questionably as  it  is  in  the  relation  of  different  from  them. 
It  cannot  even  think  itself,  except  in  this  relatedness  to 
them  ;  it  cannot  at  all  he,  except  as  a  member  of  a  reciprocal 
society."  ^ 

^  The  Limi's  of  Evolution,  pp.  352-3. 
^L.  c,  p.  311. 


SELF  AS  A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  35 

The  meaning  of  "I,"  "mine,"  "me,"  is  learned  in  exactly 
the  same  way  as  any  other  concept  or  sentiment  is  grasped, 
that  is,  by  observing  the  fact  or  feeling  in  others,  by  com- 
paring it  with  our  own,  and  by  standardizing,  as  it  were, 
the  feeling  or  idea  by  coupling  it  with  its  conventional 
symbol,  a  word.  PersonaHty  is  acquired  through  the  habit 
of  correlating  activity,  self-expression.^ 

Conversely,  this  process  of  fixing  a  center  of  gravity 
goes  on  only  as  the  outer  world,  and  especially  the  world 
of  persons,  defines  itself.  "For  we  learn  to  know  ourselves, 
first  of  all,  in  the  mirror  of  the  world ;  or,  in  other  words, 
our  knowledge  of  our  own  nature  and  of  its  possibilities 
grows  and  deepens  with  our  understanding  of  what  is 
without  us,  and  most  of  all  with  our  understanding  of  the 
general  history  of  man."  ^  The  ego  and  the  alter  are  thus 
seen  to  be  one  in  substance  and  process.  The  world  of 
copy  and  the  world  of  practice  are  two  faces  of  the  same 
shield.  "The  development  of  the  child's  personahty,"  says 
Baldwin,  "could  not  go  on  at  all  without  the  constant  modi- 
fication of  his  sense  of  himself  by  suggestions  from  others. 
So  he  himself,  at  every  stage,  is  really  in  part  some  one  else, 
even  in  his  own  thought  of  himself."  ^ 

This  same  fact  is  brought  out  obversely  by  Professor 
Cooley's  experience  with  his  child  R.  He  was  much  slower 
in  understanding  the  personal  pronouns  and  in  his  thirty- 
fifth  month  had  not  yet  straightened  them  out,  sometimes 
calling  his  father  "me."  "I  imagine  that  this  was  partly 
because  he  was  placid  and  uncontentious  in  his  earliest 
years,  manifesting  little  social  self-feeling,  but  chiefly 
occupied  with  impersonal  experiment  and  reflection;  and 

'  Cf.  Thistleton  Mark,  Unfolding  of  Personality,  pp.  27-28. 
^  Edward  Caird,  Evolution  of  Religion,  vol.  i,  p.  25. 

^  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  24 ;  cf.  id..  The  Individual  and  Society, 
26;   E.  W.  Hirst,  Internatl.  Jour.  Ethics,  22  :  298-321. 


36  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

partly  because  he  saw  little  of  other  children  by  antithesis 
to  whom  his  self  could  be  awakened."  ^  All  of  which  goes 
to  show  thatin  our  knowledge,  as  in  our  conduct,  we  are 
never  conscious  of  others  except  as  related  to  ourselves; 
and  perhaps  never  of  ourselves  except  as  connected  with 
other  selves.  Even  in  what  we  are  pleased  to  term  our 
inmost  selves  we  never  fail  to  include  "the  silent  witness," 
"the  all-seeing  eye,"  "the  still  small  voice,"  or  other  ideal 
persons.  Conversation  with  imaginary  persons  is  proof 
of  the  essentially  social  nature  of  the  mind ;  indeed  it 
/  seems  Hterally  true,  as  some  one  has  observed,  that  the 
mind  lives  in  perpetual  conversation. 

Normal  Hfe,  then,  is  never  solitary,  but  always  a  deux. 
The  fact  of  such  eternal  companionship  reduces  knowledge 
to  terms  of  conduct.  Thus  neither  the  process  of  knowledge 
nor  its  functioning  in  conduct  can  go  on  properly  in  vacuo, 
cannot,  in  other  words,  be  impersonal.  Imagine,  if  you 
can,  Robinson  Crusoe,  not  as  Robinson  the  castaway  Euro- 
pean, but  as  an  unnamed  something  spontaneously  gen- 
erated on  a  lonely  island.  Where  are  his  adventures,  where 
his  knowledge,  where  Robinson,  indeed  ?  You  have  robbed 
him  of  all  that  makes  him  Robinson.  Robinson  could  only 
have  been  Robinson  because  like  Tennyson's  Ulysses  he 
was  already  part  of  all  that  he  had  met.  "What  are  we 
in  fact,  what  is  our  character,  if  not  the  condensation  of 
the  history  that  we  have  lived  from  our  birth  —  nay,  even 
before  our  birth,  since  we  bring  with  us  prenatal  disposi- 
tions?" 2 

It  is  easy  enough  thus  to  account  for  one's  physical  self 
or  one's  accumulation  of  knowledge  in  social  terms.  But 
what  of  one's  moral  nature?  Morals  are  born  of  social 
life,  say  the  students  of  social  origins.     Morahty  is  the 

*  Human  Nature,  etc.,  161. 

2  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution,  5. 


SELF  AS  A   SOCIAL  PRODUCT  37 

result  of  a  special  moral  faculty,  moral  instinct,  conscience, 
said  the  elder  theologians  and  morahsts.  They  had  to 
postulate  some  such  injected  moral  nature  because  they 
ignored  the  social  genesis  and  nature  of  the  personal  self, 
and  failed  to  observe  that  moral  conduct  is  an  adjustment 
between  self  and  society. '^ 

In  sketching  the  development  of  the  child's  personahty 
it  would  not  be  difhcult  to  trace  out  paralleHsms  in  the  sense 
of  ''self"  of  the  child  and  of  the  savage.  This  does  not 
mean,  however,  that  the  child  recapitulates  Hterally  the 
KuUurgeschichte  of  the  race.  For  while  child  mind  resem- 
bles savage  mind  in  many  points  it  also  varies  materially 
from  it.  To  cite  only  one  difference,  it  develops  much 
faster  than  primitive  mind.  The  reason  of  course  hes  in 
the  greater  stimulus  coming  from  the  social  milieu  of  the 
civilized  child.  The  child  resembles  the  savage  in  vague 
notions  about  his  physical  "self."  The  earUest  parts  of 
the  physical  self  to  attract  attention  are  hands  and  fingers. 
Yet  we  are  told  that  little  girls  often  scold  their  fingers,  as 
if  they  were  things  apart.  Feet  also  are  frequently  apos- 
trophized, punished,  beaten,  for  breaking  things,  throwing 
the  child  down,  etc.^  At  the  age  of  three  to  five  years  the 
bones  are  generally  noticed ;  next  the  stomach,  heart, 
lungs,  breath.  Yet  notwithstanding  this  growing  knowl- 
edge children  often  fail  to  mark  off  sharply  their  sensory 
apparatus.  Thus  sometimes  they  think  they  hear  with 
eyes,  feet,  or  hands.  And  President  Hall  mentions  "the 
very  common  impression  of  young  children  that  if  the  eyes 

^  Cf.  McDougall,  Social  Psychology,  180-1.  This  agrees  with  Bentham's 
theory  that  the  'moral  sanction'  and  the  'social  sanction'  are  one.  Pro- 
fessor Fowler,  in  attempting  to  refute  this  theory,  is  compelled  to  admit  the 
constant  personal  reference  in  judgments  on  conduct.  See  his  Progressive 
Morality,  chap.  i. 

2  G.  Stanley  Hall,  "Some  Aspects  of  the  Early  Sense  of  Self,"  Amer. 
Jour,  of  Psychol.,  9:351-82,  an  article  based  on  523  replies  to  a  question- 
naire sent  out  in  1895. 


38  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

are  covered  or  closed  they  cannot  be  seen.  Some  think 
the  entire  body  thus  vanishes  from  the  sight  of  others,  some 
that  the  head  also  ceases  to  be  visible,  and  a  still  higher 
form  of  this  curious  psychosis  is  that  when  they  are  closed 
the  soul  cannot  be  seen."  ^  Such  facts  indicate  a  rough 
free-hand  blocking-in  of  the  ego.  "In  fine,  the  ego  may  be 
first  roughly  conceived  as  all  that  is  within  the  skin,  and 
the  non-ego  as  all  outside  it.  .  .  .  Within  the  surface, 
the  child's  somatic  consciousness  does  not  at  first  pene- 
trate." ^  The  reason  here  seems  to  be  the  psychologic  prin- 
ciple laid  down  in  the  preceding  chapter,  namely,  that  the 

*  physical  self  is  not  felt  and  distinguished  as  some  separate 
.  Ding-an-sich ;  it  is  only  known  by  its  activity,  or  we  might 
even  go  so  far  as  to  say  as  an  activity.  It  is  perfectly 
obvious  that  the  activities  of  exterior  members,  hands, 
feet,  mouth,  nose,  eyes,  etc.,  will  attract  attention 
and  be  built  into  the  self  concept  long  before  the  silent 
workings  of  the  visceral  organs  attract  notice.  Here  again 
the  social  reference.  For  these  exterior  members  are  more 
readily  observed  by  the  child  in  others  and  by  imitation 
and  comparison  knit  up  into  his  own  consciousness.  "The 
child  does  not  at  first  work  out  the  I-and-you  idea  in  an 
abstract  form.  The  first  personal  pronoun  is  a  sign  of  a 
concrete  thing  after  all,  but  that  thing  is  not  primarily 
the  child's  body,  or  his  muscular  sensations  as  such,  but 
the  phenomenon  of  aggressive  appropriation,  practiced  by 
himself,  witnessed  in  others,  and  incited  and  interpreted 

^  by  a  hereditary  instinct."  ^  On  the  other  hand  President 
Hall  found  that  discovery  by  the  child  of  his  inner  organs 
led  to  asking  whether  parents,  other  children,  God,  animals, 
etc.,  had  similar  organs.     Here  then  we  have  illustrated 

1 L.  c,  p.  359. 
"^  L.  c,  p.  362. 
^  Cooley,  Human  Nature,  etc.,  160. 


SELF   AS   A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  39 

both  sides  of  that  process  whereby  the  child  defines  his  self 
by  his  world  and  his  world  in  terms  of  his  self. 

The  prominent  place  given  to  names  and  nicknames 
in  the  child's  early  sense  of  his  self  indicates  a  further 
resemblance  between  the  child  and  primitive  mind.  The 
parallelism  is  even  more  striking  in  the  belief  in  meta- 
morphosis common  to  both.  For  example,  sixty-three 
girls  in  Hall's  returns  expected  when  they  were  older  to 
be  boys,  and  fourteen  boys  to  be  girls.  "This  change,  how- 
ever, involved  no  thought  of  organs  but  mainly  only  of 
dress."  This  of  course  because  the  sexual  self  and  the 
functions  of  sex  organs  have  not  at  this  age  been  distin- 
guished. Here  the  personality  is  socialized  up  to  the 
point  of  social  convention.  It  indicates  even  in  this 
grotesque  form  the  child's  idea  of  its  own  plasticity.  And 
is  not  this  after  all  the  kernel  of  the  whole  matter?  For 
what  is  the  basis  of  education  if  not  the  plasticity  of  the 
child's  self  and  the  infinite  possibilities  of  molding  it  for 
noble  ends?  Indeed  President  Hall  concludes  his  study 
in  somewhat  that  mood.  "These  phenomena,"  he  says, 
"are  hard  to  interpret,  but  suggest  that  childhood  is 
generic  and  full  of  promise  and  potency  of  many  kinds  of 
personality  and  consciousness  before  the  shades  of  the 
prison  house  close  in  upon  it."  ^ 

Heaven  may  lie  about  us  in  our  infancy,  as  Wordsworth 
claimed;  but  it  is  certain  that  Heaven  does  not  dwell 
within  us  during  our  infancy.  Perhaps  this  is  fortunate, 
for  it  opens  the  gates  of  the  infinite  universe  to  the  grow- 
ing child.  Hence  we  are  inclined  to  resent  the  bathos  and 
sentimentality  that  strive  to  make  us  believe  that  this 
world  of  experience  and  especially  social  experience,  is 
the  shade  of  the  prison  house.  It  may  be  that  the  inno- 
cence of  the  infantile  animal  or  of  the  imbecile  is  a  good 

^  L.  c,  p.  382. 


40  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

personal  asset  and  the  mark  of  heaven ;  but  it  surely  is 
not  the  mark  of  the  normal  human  being.  For  normal 
children  prison  doors  open  outward  and  release  the  em- 
bryonic personality  for  its  sojourn  in  free  society.  They 
open  to  force  the  child  out  of  "vegetative  torpor,"  out  of 
that  jelly-fish  sort  of  mysticism  which  floats  unresisting 
toward  insanity,  or  feeble-mindedness.  They  force  him 
out  into  the  swirl  of  persons  and  events  which  is  to  make 
him  man.  But  why  should  this  process  of  making  man  out 
of  the  youth  cause  him  to  lose  his  "vision  splendid"? 
What  is  the  youth's  vision  splendid  and  why  should  it 
"fade  into  the  light  of  common  day"?  For  the  child  of 
fortunate  parents  this  vision  is  ordinarily  one  of  a  world 
vof  plenty,  a  world  of  love,  devotion,  service,  justice,  coopera- 
tion. Unfortunately  to  the  child  of  the  slum,  the  child- 
laborer,  the  child  of  vicious  or  ignoble  parents,  comes  a 
vision  vastly  different,  of  a  world  of  misery,  squalor,  fatigue 
and  pain.  The  first  child  has  been  surrounded  with  com- 
fort, care,  loving  discipline,  opportunities  for  education ; 
has  been  trained  to  love  and  to  serve.  What  shatters 
his  romance  world,  his  paradise  of  love  and  service?  What 
disintegrates  his  sense  of  himself  as  a  server,  as  just,  kindly, 
chivalrous?  Simply  the  rude  impact  with  other  youths 
and  men  whose  dominant  idea  and  therefore  whose  pre- 

(  dominant  "self"  is  that  of  exploiting,  shirking,  getting 
something  for  nothing,  success  at  any  price,  brute  competi- 
tion for  existence.  He  is  dashed  upon  the  rocks  of  a  false 
philosophy  of  egoism  which  sets  man  against  man  as 
mutually  exclusive  and  fundamentally  locked  in  a  death 
struggle  for  existence. 

But  is  this  tragic  smashing  of  ideals  of  altruism  and  serv- 
ice necessary?  Is  it  the  inevitable  price  of  maturity? 
Is  a  "Social  Darwinism,"  which  tortures  Darwin's  ideas 
into  conformity  with  preconceived  systems  of  injustice,  a 


SELF  AS  A   SOCIAL  PRODUCT  41 

true  philosophy?  Sociology  must  not  be  identified  with 
such  a  philosophy.  It  may  hold  for  the  sub-human  world, 
but  Sociology  insists  that  its  subject,  man,  transcends  the 
categories  of  biology  or  "natural  history,"  and  that  man 
as  he  stands  to-day  is  far  more  truly  the  result  of  com-^i 
munion,  cooperation,  common  interests  than  of  opposition)  ] 
warfare,  or  competition.  Empedocles  taught  that  love  is 
the  creative  and  binding  principle  in  the  universe,  hate 
the  disintegrating  force ;  and  Aristotle  made  friendship  the 
basis  of  the  social  order.  ''Sociability  is  as  much  a  law  of 
nature  as  mutual  struggle"  (Kropotkin).  Human  al- 
truism is  a  natural  instinctive  product  (K.  Pearson). 
"Each  of  the  greater  steps  of  progress  is  in  fact  associated 
with  an  increased  measure  of  subordination  of  individual 
competition  to  reproductive  or  social  ends,  and  of  inter- 
specific competition  to  cooperative  association  "  (Geddes 
and  Thomson).  "The  human  struggle  for  existence, 
differing  from  the  animal  fight  between  independent 
creatures,  and  analogous  to  animal  parasitism,  is  never  a 
factor  in  selection  and  progress,  but  on  the  contrary  is 
always  a  potent  cause  of  deterioration  and  retrogression 
of  the  species"  (Loria).  "The  social  type  inherits  the 
earth.  It  does  not  defeat  itself.  It  succeeds "  (Hob- 
house).  "The  education  of  the  Race  like  that  of  the 
Individual,  prepares  us  gradually  to  Live  for  Others " 
(Comte).^  The  sentiment  of  loyalty  makes  a  strong  ap- 
peal to  the  normal  man.  The  loyalty  may  be  misplaced ; 
it  may  cleave  to  illusions ;  it  may  fail  to  discriminate  be- 
tween a  ward-boss  and  a  true  patriot ;  but  the  fact  remains 
that  the  binding  principle  is  active.  Homo  lupus  hominis 
is  not  at  all  the  primal  condition  of  mankind.     For  instead 

*  Kropotkin,  Nineteenth  Century,  18  :  339 ;  Pearson,  The  Chances  of  Death, 
etc.,  pp.  103-139  ;  Geddes  and  Thomson,  The  Evolution  of  Sex,  311 ;  Loria, 
Contemporary  Social  Problems,  ch.  vi ;  Hobhouse,  Social  Evolution  and 
Political  Theory,  25;    Comte,  Catechisme,  334. 


THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

/  of  being,  as  commonly  supposed,  in  a  constant  state  of 
violent  and  bloody  warfare,  primitive  men  are  more  or  less 
pusillanimous  and  rather  inclined  to  peace  and  quiet. 

This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  competition  and 
selection  count  for  nothing.  For  war  has  undeniably  been 
of  considerable  service  in  disciplining  to  group  activity  and 
in  cross-fertihzing  tribal  cultures  by  bringing  hostile  peoples 
into  close  contact  with  each  other's  ideas.  Nor  is  struggle 
to  be  ruled  out  of  modern  civilized  life.  Social  life  is  now 
and  always  has  been  a  ceaseless  struggle  between  invention 
and  convention,  the  new  and  the  old,  between  youth  and 
crabbed  age;  it  is  in  this  sense  that  Giddings  is  right  in 
calling  society  a  mode  of  conflict.  The  only  question  is 
where  it  should  legitimately  operate.  Should  men  in  a 
world  of  plenty  be  obliged  to  compete  for  a  bare  minimum 
of  subsistence?  Or  for  a  scanty  dole  of  education?  Or 
should  not  struggle  rather  be  Hfted  to  a  plane  of  competi- 
tion between  ideas,  devices,  institutions  for  developing 
the  world's  resources  for  the  common  weal?  In  other 
words,  a  struggle  between  ideas  rather  than  between  ani- 
mals, a  struggle  over  who  shall  serve  rather  than  who  shall 
shirk  or  exploit  ?  This  sounds  like  social  ethics :  perhaps 
it  is,  and  rather  roseate ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  sound 
common  sense  and  sound  applied  sociology. 

Is  there  any  sociologic  truth  in  Emerson's  obscure  dictum 
that  "the  man  is  but  half  himself;  the  other  half  is  his 
expression"?  Or  is  it  merely  vague  sentiment?  An 
American  savage  visiting  France  in  Montaigne's  time 
made  an  observation  that  is  the  cry  of  SociaHsm  to-day; 
he  observed  "that  there  were  among  us  (the  French)  men 
full  and  crammed  with  all  manner  of  commodities,  while, 
in  the  meantime,  their  halves  were  begging  at  their  doors, 
lean,  and  half  starved  with  hunger  and  poverty ;  and  he 
thought  it  strange  that  these  necessitous  halves  were  able 


SELF  AS   A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  43 

to  suffer  so  great  an  inequality  and  injustice,  and  that  they 
did  not  take  the  others  by  the  throats  or  set  fire  to  their 
houses."  Montaigne  quaintly  explains,  "They  have  a 
way  of  speaking  in  their  language  to  call  men  the  half  of 
one  another."  / 

Such  notions  of  participation  of  every  member  of  the 
group  in  an  organic  group  unity  are  paralleled  by  more 
modern,  equally  positive,  though  less  naive,  statements  of 
the  fact  that  we  are  all  part  and  parcel  of  each  other.  This 
deep  meaning  might  easily  be  read  into  Plato's  Symposium 
without  detracting  from  its  more  obvious  significance  as 
a  symbol  of  ideal  love.  The  old  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
mystic  body  of  Christ,  certain  aspects  of  Professor  Royce's 
pantheism,  the  Christian  Science  philosophy  of  individuals 
as  manifestations  of  an  underlying  unity  of  good,  are  more 
or  less  familiar  expressions  of  the  same  conception.  Per- 
haps all  these  ideas,  including  even  Plato's,  are  children 
of  the  ancient  Hindu  philosophy  of  man  and  nature.  Quite 
as  positive  in  their  concept  of  society  as  a  literal  organic 
unity  stand  out  the  "organicist"  group  of  contemporary 
sociologists.  However,  we  need  not  go  to  extremes  of 
mysticism  or  biological  analogy  in  order  to  establish  the 
sober  sociological  fact  that  men  are  part  and  parcel  of  each 
other.  If  we  once  grasp  the  fact  that  society  is  a  phenom- 
enon of  mental  integration  and  that  life  is  a  dynamic  unity, 
the  matter  is  easy.  The  mind  is  not  given  to  the  child 
en  bloc,  but  grows  through  experience,  experience  largely 
of  persons,  social  experience.  Hence  whatever  experience 
is  shared  by  a  group  of  persons  weaves  them  into  a  common 
web  of  unified  thought.  This  is  precisely  why  certain 
sociologists  in  looking  for  the  social  unit  have  hit  upon, 
not  the  individual,  the  socius  (for  where  is  he  to  be  found?), 
but  upon  the  activity  or  interest  which  is  common  to  and 
which  therefore  unites  a  group. 


44  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

M.  Gabriel  Tarde  in  a  picturesque  passage  once  wrote : 
*'We  are  told  that  our  body  is  a  little  condensed  air  living 
in  the  air ;  might  we  not  say  that  our  soul  is  a  bit  of  society 
incarnate  living  in  society?  Born  of  society  it  lives  by 
means  of  it."  ^  Lest  this  may  seem  to  be  the  far-fetched 
hyperbole  of  a  mystic,  let  it  be  said  that  such  doctrine  is 
the  utterest  commonplace  of  social  psychologists.  In 
plain  unmetaphorical  language  they  insist  that  human 
minds  are  not  separate  but  interwoven,  that  we  have  no 
higher  life  apart  from  other  people,  that  our  mental  outfit 
is  not  divisible  into  the  social  and  non-social,  simply  be- 
cause it  is  all  social  in  the  largest  sense. ^  Even  cautious 
Sir  Francis  Galton  hazards  the  belief  that  there  "is  de- 
cidedly a  solidarity  as  well  as  a  separateness  in  all  human 
and  probably  in  all  lives  whatsoever  :  and  this  consideration 
goes  far,  as  I  think,  to  establish  an  opinion  that  the  con- 
stitution of  the  living  Universe  is  a  pure  theism  and  that 
its  form  of  activity  is  what  may  be  described  as  coopera- 
tive." ^  It  is  a  barren  theory  which  makes  the  ability  to 
sociahze  himself  one  of  the  individual's  qualities,  which, 
indeed,  he  may  lack.  This  is  to  unthink  him  as  man,  and 
to  conceive  him  either  as  a  little  lower  than  man,  or  as  a 
great  stony,  unrelated.  Monad  deity. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  in  looking  for  the  principle  of 
societal  life  we  do  not  need  to  grub  around  for  some  special 
or  recondite  "social  instinct,"  "altruistic  impulse,"  or 
"group  faculty,"  either  inherited  or  injected.  The  princi- 
ple lies  implicit  in  man  and  his  development.  He  cannot 
become  man,  a  human  individual,  without  at  the  same 
time  becoming  incorporated  beyond  recall  and  almost 
beyond  analysis  into  the  mental  whole  which  constitutes 

^  Philosophie  Penale,  sec.  78. 

2  See  Cooley,  Human  Nature,  90-1,  61,  12 ;   Jenks,  Social  Significance  of 
the  Teachings  of  Jesus,  5;   Boodin,  /.  c,  pp.  30-1. 
^Hereditary  Genius,  ed.  1892,  p.  361. 


SELF  AS   A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  45 

society,  for  the  social  bond  is  established  and  rooted  in  the 
development  of  self-consciousness  itself.^ 

Here  we  are  plumped  once  more  into  the  problem  of  the 
individual  versus  the  group.  Is  the  individual,  and  there- 
fore his  self,  merely  a  basket  of  fruits  gathered  from  the 
multitude  of  trees  and  shrubs  that  make  up  the  social 
orchard?  Or  is  he  something  besides,  say,  a  separate 
tree  ?  Is  the  Individual  made  for  Society  or  Society  made 
for  the  Individual?  Neither.  Which  was  prior?  Again, 
neither.  They  are  complementary  and  indispensable  to 
each  other.-  Yet  the  individualistic  philosophers,  and  even 
so  modified  an  individualist  as  Professor  Eucken,  charge 
us  unceasingly  to  remember  that  the  individual  is  every- 
where and  always  something  above  and  beyond  a  mere 
portion  of  the  social  whole.  He  is  fundamentally  and  eter- 
nally himself,  unique,  a  member  if  you  please  of  some 
higher  spiritual  order,  God's  Universal  Kingdom.  "The 
individual,"  says  Eucken,  "can  never  be  reduced  to  the 
position  of  a  mere  member  of  society,  of  a  church,  of  a 
state ;  notwithstanding  all  external  subordination,  he 
must  assert  an  inner  superiority ;  each  spiritual  in- 
dividual is  more  than  the  whole  external  world."  On 
the  other  hand  he  apportions  to  the  group  its  separate 
unified  life  above  and  beyond  the  individual.^  In 
another  place  he  reproaches  the  philosophy  of  Plotinus 
because  of  its  isolating  tendency,  because  "there  is  no 
path  leading  from  this  inwardness  back  to  the  wide 
field  of  life";  because  it  recognizes  "no  inner  solidarity 
between  men,  no  assimilation  of  another  or  of  the 
whole  into   one's  own    inner  being";    because   "there   is 

^  Baldwin,  The  Individual  and  Society,  p.  26. 

2  Cf.  the  chapter,  "Was  the  Individual  Prior  to  Society?"  in  Carus'  The 
Nature  of  the  State  (Open  Court  Publishing  Co.  1904) ;  Baldwin,  Individual 
and  Society,  chap.  i. 

^  Quoted  in  Current  Literature,  July,  191 2,  p.  69. 


46  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

here  no  inner  world  encompassing  men  and  forming  a 
bond  of  union  between  them."  ^ 

It  is  idle  thus  to  oppose  society  to  the  individual,  for 
several  reasons.  First,  they  are  simply  two  ways  of  look- 
ing at  the  same  thing.  Again,  they  are  two  of  perhaps  the 
many  ways  in  which  the  life  process  has  chosen  to  express 
itself,  both  equally  valid  and  equally  useful,  both  comple- 
mentary. From  a  study  of  biology  M.  Bergson  finds  that 
Nature  constantly  vibrates  between  the  two  poles  of  in- 
dividuality and  sociality,  and  at  times  seems  actually  to 
hesitate  between  the  two  forms  as  if  to  ask  whether  she 
shall  make  a  society  or  an  individual.^ 

In  human  society  and  the  human  individual  nature 
seems  to  solve  the  puzzle  by  creating  the  individual's 
real  self  out  of  the  stuff  of  society,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  have  trusted  to  variations  in  the  individual  for  the  con- 
stant renewing  and  freshening  of  the  social  mass.  The 
function  of  society  in  molding  the  individual's  knowledge 
is  indubitable,  as  we  have  already  frequently  pointed  out. 
The  body  of  social  thinking  which,  with  MM.  Durkheim 
and  Levy-Bruhl,  we  may  call  "collective  representations," 
constrains  the  individual  not  only  in  his  sentiments  and 
his  will,  but  even  in  his  very  intelligence,  his  process  of 
knowing,  itself.  According  to  such  pragmatic  conceptions, 
knowledge  is  a  sort  of  polling  the  jury,  a  matching  of  stories. 
A  gets  a  certain  experience,  technically  called  a  'reaction'; 

^  The  Life  of  the  Spirit,  353-5.  Professor  Urvnck  attempts  to  resolve 
the  puzzle,  which  it  seems  to  me  that  Eucken  complicates  rather  than  clears 
up,  by  assuming  three  natures  in  each  of  us :  (i)  the  natural  self-seeking 
self;  (2)  the  social  and  socially  created  person;  (3)  the  true  individual. 
The  first  two  are  made  of  society  and  human  experience,  hence  subordinate 
to  and  determined  by  them.  The  third  is  spiritual,  free,  with  no  duties  or 
responsibilities  to  the  group.  Of  course  such  a  solution,  as  its  author  frankly 
admits,  soars  outside  the  region  of  objective  science  and  reaches  the  heights 
of  philosophy ;    it  cannot  be  called  a  sociological  solution. 

^  Creative  Evolution,  259-61 ;  cf.  B.  Thorsch,  Der  Einzelne  und  die 
Cesellschafl,  I,  13-14. 


SELF  AS   A  SOCIAL   PRODUCT  47 

he  goes  to  B  and  to  C  to  compare  notes ;  B  and  C  do  like- 
wise ;  those  reactions  which  the  consensus  of  opinion 
establishes  become  validated  and  erected  into  facts  of 
experience  or  knowledge.  A's  ideas  without  this  social 
reference  would  have  remained  vague  and  inchoate,  if 
indeed  they  remained  at  all.  But  by  the  very  communi- 
cating of  them  —  and  he  must  communicate  them  ^  —  they 
get  clipped  and  pared  down  to  a  certain  definiteness ;  their 
comparison  with  the  ideas  of  others  clears  them  up  still 
more  ;  if  the  social  reference  results  in  a  verdict  of  approval, 
then  they  become  collective,  socially  capitalized,  funded 
in  the  common  social  experience.  Social  reference  and 
approval  once  secured,  the  idea  becomes  fixed,  consolidated, 
crystallized  into  a  conviction.  Quod  uhique,  quod  semper, 
quod  ah  omnibus  creditum  est  hoc  est  vere  catholicum,  etc. 
This  process  of  concept  and  language  forming  Professor 
Jerusalem  calls  eine  soziale  Verdichtungr 

Most  of  our  life,  bodily  and  mental,  goes  along  according 
to  this  sheep-like  process.  To  be  sure,  there  is  in  every 
individual  thought  an  element  of  originahty,  due  to  the 
universal  tendency  to  mutation  and  variety :  that  is,  every 
one  is  at  the  same  time  himself  and  Herr  Omnes ;  he  is  an 
"absolutely  singular  and  unrepeatable  personality,"  and 
withal  a  bundle  of  wholesale  borrowings  and  imitations,  a 
"collective  self -consciousness."  The  more  of  himself,  the 
more  he  is  a  heretic  and  departs  from  the  mere  on  dit  or 
social-accord  standard  of  truth  and  knowledge.  If  the  dose 
of  himself  be  extreme,  we  have  the  genius,  the  scientist,  the 
seer,  the  perceiver  of  new  verities,  the  announcer  of  new 
ideas,  the  prophet  of  new  heavens  and  new  earths.     But 

^  "The  impulse  to  communicate  is  not  so  much  a  result  of  thought  as  it  is 
an  inseparable  part  of  it.  They  are  like  root  and  branch,  two  phases  of  a 
common  growth  so  that  the  death  of  one  presently  involves  that  of  the 
other."     Cooley,  Human  Nature,  p.  56. 

^  "Sociologie  des  Erkennens,"  in  Die  Zukunjt,  1909,  pp.  236-46. 


48  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

here  again  the  inevitably  social  character  of  the  knowledge 
process  reappears ;  for  social  reference  must  intervene  be- 
fore the  new  ideas  can  be  incorporated  into  the  group  in- 
telhgence  to  become  new  convictions.  At  this  point  enters 
the  function  of  education  and  its  opportunity  for  social 
control,  control  not  only  of  sentiments  and  will,  but  also 
of  the  very  stuff  and  fiber  of  intelligence  as  well.  And  this 
education  will  always  bear  in  mind  that  the  social  self, 
character  as  a  social  product,  does  not  mean  absolute  dead 
level  of  capacity,  that  monotonous  egalitarianism  which 
used  to  be  the  nightmare  of  thoroughgoing  individualists. 
It  merely  demands  a  minimum  -of  effective  socializing  and 
admits  of  unlimited  variations  in  ability  and  aptitude. 

But  in  addition  to  common  knowledge  its  correlative, 
common  activity,  creates  a  society  out  of  individuals.  If 
men  were  purely  static,  self-sufficing,  contemplative,  fixed, 
each  like  a  bronze  Buddha  upon  his  separate  pedestal,  then 
we  might  very  well  talk  of  absolute,  discrete  individuals. 
But  men  are  by  nature  active,  and  for  the  fullest  play  of 
their  activity  require  their  fellows  to  act  with  and  upon. 
And  it  is  really  out  of  this  common  activity  that  we  get  our 
socialized  knowledge  and  sentiments.  Hence  group  ac- 
tivity is  the  forge  blast  which  fuses  the  unit  selves  or  persons 
into  the  social  whole ;  and  conversely  it  is  through  this 
same  group  activity  that  the  units  find  their  selves  and 
become  real  persons. 

It  is  perfectly  in  order  to  assume,  if  anybody  chooses  to 
do  so,  that  there  is  a  Person-in-itself,  akin  to  the  meta- 
physical abstraction  of  the  thing-in-itself.  But  neither 
the  assumption  nor  such  a  hypothetical  being  could  have 
any  serious  value.  For,  as  we  have  sought  to  show  over 
and  again,  the  human  person  has  become  human  and  a 
self-conscious  person  only  through  identification  with  his 
fellows  in  human  society  and  through  activity  with  and 


SELF   AS  A   SOCIAL  PRODUCT  49 

upon  them.  Not  one  of  us  knows  himself  as  some  eternal, 
colorless  person-in-itself,  but  as  a  warm,  living  complex 
of  our  social  fellows.  "It  is  .  .  .  the  most  remarkable 
outcome  of  modern  social  theory  —  the  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  the  individual's  normal  growth  lands  him  in 
essential  solidarity  with  his  fellows,  while  on  the  other  hand 
exercise  of  his  social  duties  and  privileges  advances  his 
highest  and  purest  individuality."  ^ 

Further,  the  group  activity  not  only  really  confers  person- 
ality upon  the  individual,  but  it  also  actually  increases  the 
individual's  ability  and  output.  It  is  frequently  assumed 
that  the  output  of  a  given  group  of,  say,  laborers  or  school 
children,  is  merely  the  sum  of  the  unit,  individual  outputs, 
and  that  such  a  sinking  of  individuals  into  the  mass  even 
lowers  the  total  capacity.  But  the  contrary  seems  to  be 
true.  Dr.  Mayer  of  Wiirzburg  found  that  the  boys  of  the 
fifth  school  year  in  the  people's  schools  in  Wiirzburg  did 
superior  work  when  in  groups  than  when  working  as  in- 
dividuals. Another  investigator  after  a  careful  test  of 
school  children  in  their  home  work  as  compared  with 
school  group  work  concluded  that  for  most  kinds  of 
work  the  product  in  the  classroom  was  superior.  Mayer's 
study  indicated  that  the  tendency  to  distraction  is  di- 
minished rather  than  increased  by  class  work.  The  class 
acts  as  a  sort  of  pace-maker;  it  also  contributes  certain 
affective  or  emotional  stimuli.  The  imaginative  stimulus 
of  the  group  has  too  often  been  proved  in  both  primitive 
and  contemporary  society  to  need  further  argument. 
Group  work  through  its  mental  rapport  or  "class  spirit" 

*  Baldwin,  The  Individual  and  Society,  16 ;  cf.  Paul  Natorp,  Sozialpadago- 
gik,  p.  84:  "Der  einzelne  Mensch  ist  eigentlich  nur  eine  Abstraktion, 
gleich  dem  Atom  des  Physikers.  Der  Mensch,  hinsichtlich  alles  dessen.  was 
ihm  zum  Menschen  macht,  ist  nicht  erst  als  Einzelner  da,  um  dann  auch  mit 
Andern  in  Gemeinschaft  zu  treten,  sondern  er  ist  ohne  diese  Gemeinschaft 
gar  nicht  Mensch." 


50  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

develops  superior  concentration  and  yields  not  only  a 
larger  product  but  also  a  better  work-spirit.  Tests  in  the 
psychological  laboratories  confirm  these  conclusions.  Er- 
gograph  and  dynamometer  experiments  show  uniformly 
that  when  the  subject  of  the  experiment  is  alone  he  works 
less,  and  more  painfully,  than  when  others  are  present. 
The  evolution  of  industry  adds  striking  testimony  to  the 
same  fact.  Karl  Bticher's  Arbeit  und  Rhythmus  is  full 
of  illustrations  of  the  disciplinary  effects  of  rhythmic  con- 
certed action.  An  excellent  example  of  Bucher's  theory 
occurs  in  a  recent  description  of  Negro  labor  on  the  rail- 
ways of  the  South.  A  southern  railway  ofHcial  says  that 
a  leader  must  be  provided  for  each  gang  of  workers,  and 
that  he  must  be  gifted  with  a  good  voice.  He  uses  a  chant 
which  enables  the  men  to  work  in  unison.  "Every  pick 
rises  and  falls  at  the  same  instant  in  time  with  the  rhythm 
of  the  song  of  the  leader,  and  it  is  surprising  to  note  the 
speed  with  which  the  work  can  be  done  by  this  means."  ^ 
At  Calavan  and  other  places  in  the  Philippine  Islands  the 
natives  transplant  rice  to  rhythmic  tunes  on  a  banjo ;  this 
device  was  introduced  by  the  Spaniards  to  secure  steady 
and  sustained  work  from  their  untutored  dependents. 
Such  schemes  are  not  by  any  means  mere  "speeding-up" 
devices ;  for,  in  addition  to  securing  a  larger  product,  they 
yield  a  by-product  of  pleasure  in  the  process. 

We  conclude,  then,  with  Professor  Burnham,  that  like 
the  constant  peripheral  stimulation  necessary  to  keep  us 
awake,  "a  social  stimulus  is  necessary  as  an  internal  con- 
dition, as  we  may  say,  of  consciousness."  ^  Perhaps  we 
should  add  that  this  conclusion  holds  good  in  spite  of  the 
exaggerated  criticism  of  the  group  stimulus  and  its  formula- 
tion into  the  bogy  of  "mob-mind."     M.  LeBon  has  re- 

'  The  Outlook,  June  8,  191 2,  p.  318. 
^Science,  May  20,  1910,  p.  767. 


SELF  AS  A   SOCIAL  PRODUCT  51 

cently  reiterated  his  former  pronouncements  on  this  subject 
by  saying:  "Democratic  theories  pretend  that  the  iso- 
lated individual  is  nothing,  but  acquires  all  his  capacities 
by  participating  in  that  entity  called  the  'people.'  Psy- 
chology teaches,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  collective  in- 
dividual is  mentally  very  inferior  to  the  isolated  man."  ^ 
But  it  is  perfectly  evident  that,  put  in  this  unqualified  way, 
psychology  teaches  no  such  thing.  It  is  further  apparent 
that  for  M.  LeBon  the  group,  the  collectivity,  society, 
association,  always  spells  Mob.  Sound  thinking  needs 
both  society  and  solitude ;  society  for  stimulus  and  access 
to  the  common  heritage  of  culture ;  soUtude  for  digestion 
and  elaboration. 

But,  some  one  objects,  this  is  determinism.  If  society 
furnishes  the  mold  into  which  our  very  selves  are  cast, 
and  furnishes  moreover  the  materials  to  be  poured  into 
the  molds,  if  social  organization  is  essentially  an  integra- 
tion of  individual  wills,  what  becomes  of  us,  of  our  personal 
responsibility,  our  self-respect,  our  free  will?  Well,  our 
sense  of  personal  responsibility,  our  sense  of  self-respect, 
our  sense  of  free  will  are  created  and  developed  in  precisely 
the  same  way  that  we  achieve  a  sense  of  our  self  in  general. 
They  come  through  activity  with  and  upon  our  fellows, 
through  experience,  through  imitation,  through  trial  and 
error.  But  does  this  not  destroy  the  moral  order  by  putting 
a  premium  upon  irresponsibility  ?  Not  in  the  least ;  for 
to  have  a  stable  society  the  idea  of  cooperation,  of  social 
service,  of  social  responsibility,  if  they  have  not  grown 
normally  into  the  individual's  sense  of  self  must  be  incor- 
porated into  it  through  proper  social  discipline  and  treat- 
ment. Responsibility  to  some  supra-mundane  moral  order 
is  replaced  by  obligation  to  develop  and  maintain  an 
efficient  social  "self." 

^  Figaro,  January  11,  191 2. 


52  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Since  the  mind  is  a  whole  both  in  its  feehng  of  itself  and 
in  its  expression  in  the  activity  of  any  given  moment,  there 
is  always  reserved  to  it  the  feeling  of  freedom  which  is  the 
only  essential  point  to  this  ancient  controversy.  "As  a 
man  thinketh  in  his  heart  so  is  he."  The  suggestions  to 
thought  may  come  from  our  social  fellows,  from  God,  from 
the  remotest  corner  of  the  cosmos,  from  other  orders  of 
experience  not  yet  grasped  by  our  workaday  intelligence. 
Yet  in  coming  to  the  mind,  who  can  deny  that  they  cause, 
determine  the  mind,  whether  in  its  knowing  phase,  or  its 
feeling,  or  its  willing  ?  They  determine  not  only  what  we 
are,  but  what  we  do.  In  this  sense  we  are  free,  and  in  this 
sense  only :  we  are  free  to  do  as  we  please,  but  we  must 
please  what  we  are.  We  learn  to  speak  by  the  exercise 
of  will,  so  we  are  told.  But  my  Chinese  friend,  Mr.  Fong 
Sec,  who  came  to  America  as  a  boy,  might  have  willed  his 
life  away  willing  to  learn  English,  but  if  he  had  not  thrown 
himself  among  English  speaking  people,  or  read  English 
books,  or  attended  public  schools  and  an  American  univer- 
sity, he  could  not  have  spoken  a  word  of  English  though 
he  lived  as  long  as  a  Chinese  sage.  Furthermore,  when 
Mr.  Sec  wanted  to  return  to  China  mere  willing  could  not 
recall  his  Cantonese  dialect.  He  was  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  an  American.  He  was  free  to  speak  Cantonese, 
true  enough ;  but  he  had  to  re-become  Cantonese  by  hard 
study  before  he  could  regain  the  tongue.  I  wonder  what 
the  slum  child  is  free  to  do?  When,  for  example,  did  the 
freedom  of  Jacob  Beresheim  —  New  York  tenement  dweller 
and  boy  murderer  —  begin  ?  Only,  if  we  may  judge  from 
Mr.  Riis'  story  (in  his  "Battle  with  the  Slum"),  when  the 
law  yanked  him  out  of  the  wretched  conditions  that  created 
him  a  murderer.  The  whole  trend  of  modern  thinking 
upon  the  causes  of  poverty  is  to  sweep  away  such  concepts 
of  freedom.     Growth  in  the  understanding  of  the  nature 


SELF  AS   A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  53 

and  causes  of  feeblemindedness  has  also  forced  a  recon- 
sideration of  the  problem  of  freedom. 

Now,  since,  as  we  have  already  seen,  our  feelings,  ideas, 
sense  of  self,  are  social  products,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word  we  are  socially  determined.  In  this  process  we 
really  achieve  a  wider  freedom  —  the  freedom  that  comes 
from  thinking  widely  and  feeling  deeply.  Our  own  petty 
designs  and  choices  are  enlarged  to  the  highest  measure  of 
our  group.  Our  own  limited  free  will  acquires  tremendous 
significance  from  its  federation  with  that  of  our  fellows. 
Freedom  is  a  relative  term  and  implies  law.  As  we  shall 
see  later,  the  more  primitive  men  are,  the  narrower  their 
range  of  interests  and  the  more  they  are  the  sport  of  natural 
forces.  As  their  thought  horizon  widens  an  almost  in- 
finitely greater  number  of  thought  combinations  and 
choices  become  possible.  This  is  freedom  increased,  in 
no  mean  sense.  By  the  same  process,  and  it  is  a  social 
process,  man's  control  over  nature  through  reading  law 
into  it  adds  to  his  sum  of  freedom.  Therefore  we  are 
justified  in  saying  that  the  sense  of  the  self  as  a  conscious 
free  agent  is,  like  other  aspects  of  the  self,  largely  if  not 
wholly  a  social  creation. 

To  some  minds  physical  determinism,  that  is  to  say 
heredity,  crops  out  as  an  objection  to  social  determination 
of  the  self.  But  no  one  has  been  able  to  show  that  per- 
sonality, character,  is  inherited  en  bloc.  It  is  the  merest 
balderdash  to  assume  that  men  are  born  conservative  or 
radical.  They  are  both ;  as  infants  they  resent  changes 
which  discommode  their  tiny  comforts,  and  at  the  same 
time  are  greedy  for  new  experiences  even  at  the  cost  of 
temporary  scratches  or  bruises.  Again,  the  most  ardent 
hereditarian  would  not  risk  the  absurd  contention  that 
the  child  carries  in  him  all  the  elements  of  his  mature  self. 
Whether  along  with  his  stock  of  truncated  and  rudimentary 


54  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

instincts  the  child  brings  with  him  into  the  world  also  a 
bundle  of  quite  definite  and  specific  mental  qualities  and 
aptitudes  which  are  only  different  aspects  of  physical 
predispositions  is  a  debatable  question  by  no  means  easy 
to  prove.  Shakespeare  was  able  to  prove  it  only  by 
sacrificing  probability  to  dramatic  effect  and  to  his  favorite 
thesis  "blood  will  tell"  (as  in  Cymbeline,  Twelfth  Night, 
Winter  s  Tale).  That  physical  and  mental  elements  have 
so  combined  to  give  the  child  before  birth  a  certain  mental 
"set"  or  temperament  we  may  assume  as  likely.  But  in 
the  same  breath  we  must  assume,  too,  that  this  set  or 
temperament  may  be,  and  a  thousand  to  one  will  be,  over- 
borne and  modified  by  his  social  environment.  Social 
suggestion  and  habit  (which  Dr.  Jordan  calls  the  "higher 
heredity")  will  dissolve  hereditary  granite.  Heredity  is  its 
own  undoing.  For  while  transmitting  "characters"  it 
transmits  also  the  impetus  by  which  the  characters  are 
modified  or  annulled. 

Indeed  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  we  only  possess  our 
inheritance  by  earning  it.  Goethe,  while  believing  fully 
in  the  heredity  of  mental  aptitudes  and  tastes,  delivers 
himself  of  this  apparent  paradox:  "What  thou  hast  in- 
herited from  the  fathers,  labor  for,  in  order  to  possess 
it."  Why?  Because  our  mental  and  physical  inherit- 
ances become  really  ours  only  as  we  actually  develop  them. 
The  infant's  body,  however  complete,  would  remain  a 
flabby  mass  unless  he  began  to  exercise  and  develop  him- 
self by  imitative  and  premonitory  plays.  His  mind  would 
remain,  too,  a  vague,  schematic  outfit  of  half-emerged 
instincts  unless  he  completed  them  by  social  activity.  In 
spite  of  Galton's  elaborate  attempt  to  prove  the  inherit- 
ance of  mental  superiorities,  it  appears  from  fuller  evidence 
that  the  real  determining  factor  in  perpetuating  a  strain 
of  intelligence  was  social  inheritance,   the  inheritance  of 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  55 

superior  opportunities  for  maintaining  intellectual  pre- 
eminence. It  seems  pretty  generally  proved  that  the  dis- 
tribution of  ability  does  not  coincide  with  classes.  The 
inheritance  of  such  ability,  or  superior  capacity,  is,  to  say 
the  very  least,  so  questionable  that  it  must  yield  a  rather 
shaky  foundation  for  any  broad  and  sound  social  policy.^ 
It  breaks  down  also  in  the  commonest  affairs  of  daily  life ; 
people  with  a  heavy  baggage  of  family  pride  who  assume 
that  they  are  to  the  manner  born  are  frequently  the  rudest, 
most  ungracious,  and  ill-mannered.  Good  manners  are 
made,  not  born. 

To  the  common  objection  that  no  two  children  in  a  large 
family  are  alike  it  is  proper  to  answer  that  no  two  of  these 
children  are  placed  in  the  same  environment.  The  first 
child  comes  bathed  in  nuptial  love.  The  second  takes  its 
place  in  a  family  of  four  instead  of  three ;  the  third  finds 
himself  a  member  of  a  group  of  five.  To  say  nothing  of 
the  differing  possibilities  of  experience  based  simply  on  the 
mathematical  principles  of  permutations  and  combinations, 
the  fourth  and  fifth  children  find  their  parents  older,  less 
romantic,  more  driven  by  exigencies  of  employment  or  social 
getting-on,  perhaps  haunted  by  the  fear  of  death,  widow- 
hood, or  failing  income.  In  every  child,  then,  we  should 
expect  marked  variations  quite  independent  of  their  com- 
mon physical  heredity  and  of  variations  in  the  germ  plasm 

^  Cf.  Ward,  Applied  Sociology,  pp.  95-110,  chap,  ix;  Odin,  La  genese  des 
grands  homnies,  vol.  i;  .Fahlbeck,  Archiv  f.  Rassen- und  Gesellschafts- 
biologie,  Heft  i,  1912.  The  famous  debate  between  Woods  and  Cattail 
{Science,  vol.  30,  1909)  ought  to  be  read  in  this  connection.  Cattell's  argu- 
ment fortifies  the  position  here  taken.  Recent  studies  in  psychology,  par- 
ticularly psychology  of  "the  unconscious,"  tend  to  establish  the  presump- 
tion that  many  traits  of  the  adult  are  due  not  to  organic  heredity,  as  radical 
eugenists  claim,  but  rather  to  impressions  received  during  early  infancy. 
These  impressions  constitute  those  potential  other  selves  discussed  in  the 
preceding  chapter.  A  good  summary  of  this  line  of  evidence  will  be  found 
in  Kohs'  brief  paper,  "New  Light  on  Eugenics,"  Journal  of  Heredity,  6: 
446-452.     His  bibliography  permits  a  full  investigation  of  the  subject. 


56  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

itself.^  In  so  far  as  bodily  feelings  —  somatic  conscious- 
ness —  form  a  part  of  the  sense  of  self,  it  is  accountable  to 
physical  heredity.  Physical  heredity  seems  to  furnish 
the  vase,  but  social  heredity  pours  in  the  contents.  We 
are  beginning  to  realize,  too,  that  even  the  body  is  not 
nearly  so  fixed  by  heredity  as  we  were  wont  to  presume. 
Changes  in  diet,  climate,  beliefs  in  disease,  faith  in  the 
recuperative  power  of  mind,  elimination  of  worry,  pressure 
of  fatigue,  germ  damage  through  alcohol,  febrile  disease  or 
temporary  subnormalities  of  the  parent  at  the  time  of  con- 
ception, all  of  these  things  in  either  child  or  adult  can 
break  the  mold  of  genuine  heredity.  It  is  perhaps  too 
early  to  pin  our  faith  to  such  results  as  those  apparently 
attained  by  Prof.  Boas  in  his  anthropological  measure- 
ments of  immigrants  to  New  York.^  But  even  if  his  thou- 
sands of  Jews  and  Sicilians  of  the  first  and  second  genera- 
tion in  response  to  their  new  environment  did  not  actually 
become  so  much  rounder  or  broader  headed,  or  so  much 
taller,  or  so  much  heavier,  as  the  figures  seem  to  show,  still 
they  indicate  that  something  physically  important  hap- 
pened. And  the  very  fact  that  the  experiment  was  made 
proves  that  we  believed  more  in  plasticity  than  our  faith 
in  heredity  would  permit  us  to  avow.     It  is  perhaps  not 

^  "Environment,  in  the  sense  of  social  influence  actually  at  work,  is  far 
from  the  definite  and  obvious  thing  it  is  often  assumed  to  be.  Our  real 
environment  consists  of  those  images  which  are  most  present  to  our  thoughts, 
and  in  the  case  of  a  vigorous,  growing  mind,  these  are  likely  to  be  something 
quite  different  from  what  is  most  present  to  the  senses"  (Cooley,  Human 
Nature,  271). 

2  Franz  Boas,  "Changes  in  Bodily  Form  of  Descendants  of  Immigrants," 
Report  of  Immigration  Comm.,  vol.  38,  1910.  It  may  be  well  to  call  attention 
to  Radosavljevich's  savage  criticism  of  Professor  Boas'  methods  and  results 
in  American  Anthropologist,  13  (n.  s.) :  394-436;  also  Prof.  Sergi's  critique, 
"La  pretesa  influenza  dell'  ambiente  sui  caratteri  fisici  dell'  uomo, "  in 
Rivista  Ilaliana  di  Sociologia,  16:  16-24  (1912).  On  the  other  hand  the 
studies  of  Moritz  Alsberg  in  Archiv  fiir  Rassen-  und  Geselhchaflsbiologie 
(March,  April,  191 2)  seem  to  confirm  Boas'  results;  so  also  Prof.  Ridgeway's 
study  in  Pop.  Sci.  Monthly,  December,  1908. 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  '57 

impertinent  to  point  out  that  if  the  Italian  or  Russian  Jew 
leaves  his  old  self  at  Messina  or  Odessa  or  Ellis  Island  and 
proceeds  to  achieve  an  American  "self,"  it  does  not  matter 
much  whether  his  skull  gets  broader  or  not.  If,  however, 
to  become  dolicocephalous  will  help  along  the  growth  of 
his  new  self,  so  much  the  better,  and  we  welcome  the  cali- 
pers and  yardsticks  of  the  anthropologists. 


CHAPTER  V 

SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT   {Continued) 

"Every  cherished  idea  is  a  self."    (Cooley) 

Having  established  that  the  self  grows  and  can  be 
molded,  perhaps  we  are  in  a  position  to  ask,  what  is  a 
socially  valuable  self  and  how  may  it  best  be  grown?  One 
of  the  greatest  religious  teachers  of  the  nineteenth  century 
declared  that  the  "human  self  must  be  evangelized."  But 
what  is  the  objective  point  of  such  evangelization  ?  In  the 
first  place,  do  we  want  a  society  made  up  of  self-less  or  un- 
selfed  beings  ?  No,  for  we  should  have  jelly  and  not  society. 
We  need  individual  selves  well  developed  and  active,  for 
somewhat  the  same  reason  that  life  achieves  greater  fiexi- 
bihty  through  separate  ribs,  joints,  articulation,  than  when 
it  becases  itself  in  the  bony  prison  of  the  crustacean. 
Human  society  is  not  Nirvana  and  has  scant  use  for  the 
hermit  or  the  self-less  nihihst.  Such  selflessness,  far  from 
being  unselfish,  is  the  height  of  selfishness.  It  is  that  sort 
of  aesthetic  individualism  which  seems  to  have  contributed 
to  Greek  decadence,  and  to  the  feeble  civic  life  of  Catholic 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Love  to  one's  neighbor  does 
not  mean  annihilation  of  one's  self,  but  simply  the  recog- 
nition that  self  and  neighbor  are  fundamentally  one.  To 
deny  one's  self  is  merely  to  retire  from  the  field  and  do 
nothing.  Such  renunciation  is  folly,  for  life  is  dynamic 
and  insists  that  we  act  out  our  social  nature ;  otherwise  we 
must  shrivel  and  die.     For  this  reason  the  widest  oppor- 

S8 


SELF  AS   A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  59 

tunity  for  the  cultivation  of  Pcrsonlichkeit  must  be  de- 
manded and  granted ;  but  not  for  the  adornment  of  a 
perfumed  ego :  the  /  in  us  must  be  realized  and  cultivated 
through  the  realization  and  cultivation  of  the  /  in  others. 
But  through  it  all  the  self  must  be  permitted  to  assert  and 
express  itself  normally ;  otherwise  it  will  degenerate  into 
colorless  asceticism  or  monasticism  on  the  one  hand,  or 
explode  into  a  wild  riot  of  anarchic  individualism  on  the 
other. 

It  is  not  by  any  means  necessary  for  the  cultivation  of  a 
valuable  self  to  march  with  Tolstoi  in  the  rejection  of  all 
personal  service,  provided  we  are  equally  ready  to  render 
personal  service.  But  it  is  doubtful  whether  at  our  present 
stage  of  economic  and  social  development  we  either  could 
or  should  revive  primitive  ideas  of  personal  service.  Eco- 
nomic self-sufhciency  is  out  of  the  question ;  the  hands  of 
the  clock  will  not  turn  back.  There  are  of  course  —  as 
the  Social  Settlements  have  proved  —  many  avenues  yet 
neglected  for  the  exercise  of  personal  good  neighborliness. 
Yet,  after  all,  in  the  effort  to  create  opportunities  for  the 
full  development  of  everybody's  self  it  is  possible  that  what 
the  poor  need  most  from  the  well-to-do  and  cultured  classes 
is  not  mere  "old-fashioned  neighborliness,"  but  better 
citizenship ;  not  so  much  a  self-denying  altruism  of  volun- 
teer personal  service  as  an  income  altruism  that  will  create 
and  maintain  more  favorable  living  conditions.  The 
Friendly  Visitor  might  often  do  more  effective  service  as 
the  citizen  who  refuses  to  buy  "sweated"  clothes  or  finery. 
It  is  conceivable  that  if  working  and  living  conditions  are 
made  tolerable,  acquaintance  and  friendship  will  spring 
up  spontaneously  among  those  who  are  natural  neighbors, 
who  are  thrown  into  ordinary  industrial  and  social  relations. 
For  suspicion  is  eliminated  and  mutual  confidence  enlisted, 
without  which  there  can  never  be  the  slighest  basis  for  real 


6o  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

neighborliness.  Good  will  must  always  rest  upon  social 
justice.  Only  a  sentimental,  feudal  sort  of  egotism  will 
insist  upon  maintaining  that  ranging  of  classes  which  will 
permit  of  Lord  and  Lady  Bountiful  as  the  type  of  the  good 
neighbor.  Not  alms,  but  a  friend,  says  the  new  charity. 
But  that  friend  will  express  his  friendship  in  efforts  to 
eliminate  the  need  of  alms  or  charity  of  any  sort.  The 
democracy  of  selves  for  which  we  contend  and  dream  has 
no  place  for  patron  or  pauper. 

If  I  were  asked  to  state  in  two  words  the  mark  of  a  socially 
valuable  "self,"  I  should  say  without  hesitation  efficient 
imagination.  For  without  imagination  we  can  have  no 
broad  and  abiding  sympathy;  without  it  we  are  mere 
clansmen  or  tribesmen,  or  narrow  members  of  a  guild, 
trades-union  or  profession ;  or  we  lock  ourselves  in  by  our 
own  firesides  as  momentary  patterns  of  domestic  virtue 
and  like  Meredith's  Egoist  chant  to  our  lovely  bride,  "You 
and  I  and  the  world  outside !"  But  to  attain  that  01>Tn- 
pian  sort  of  sjonpathy  which  will  overleap  the  boundaries 
of  craft  or  class  or  country  and  create  new  worlds  out  of 
old  requires  a  vigorous  responsive  imagination.  I  believe 
we  have  not  utilized  a  tithe  of  the  possibiUties  of  developing 
an  imaginative  self.  Social  reformers,  teachers,  preachers, 
capture  the  imagination  for  social  service,  and  behold  the 
new  world  ! 

Lockhart  in  his  life  of  Scott  says  that  Sir  Walter  once 
remarked  in  the  course  of  a  conversation  on  the  high  senti- 
ments often  expressed  by  uneducated  persons  :  "We  shall 
never  learn  to  feel  and  respect  our  real  calling  and  destiny, 
unless  we  have  taught  ourselves  to  consider  everything  as 
moonshine  compared  with  the  education  of  the  heart." 
For  out  of  the  heart  flow  imagination  and  sentiment  where- 
with to  meet  the  issues  of  life.  A  notable  Danish  sociologist 
recently  wrote:     "Moral  evolution  has  consisted  almost 


SELF  AS  A   SOCIAL  PRODUCT  6l 

wholly  in  the  increasing  liberation  of  the  imagination."  ^ 
W.  E.  H.  Lecky  in  tracing  a  large  share  of  immorality  to 
lack  of  imagination  follows  it  up  with  a  plea  for  education 
as  the  means  of  increasing  morality  by  enlarging  the  im- 
agination. "If  our  benevolent  feelings  are  then  the  slaves 
of  our  imaginations,  if  an  act  of  realization  is  a  necessary 
antecedent  and  condition  of  comparison,  it  is  obvious  that 
any  influence  that  augments  the  range  and  power  of  this 
realizing  faculty  is  favorable  to  the  amiable  virtues,  and 
it  is  equally  evident  that  education  has  in  the  highest  degree 
this  effect."  ^  Whether  expressed  in  so  many  words  or 
not,  this  is  evidently  what  Superintendent  Brockway  had 
in  mind  when  contending  for  the  reformatory  effects  of 
intellectual  education  at  Elmira.^  And  as  Mr.  Wells 
points  out,  if  we  are  going  to  arrest  our  present  pretty  clear 
drift  towards  revolution  or  revolutionary  disorder  it  must 
not  be  through  training  a  governing  class  to  get  the  better 
of  an  argument  or  the  best  of  a  bargain  ;  it  must  be  through 
laying  hold  of  the  imaginations  of  "this  drifting,  sullen 
and  suspicious  multitude,  which  is  the  working  body  of 
the  country."  ^ 

If  we  are  justified  in  interpreting  Socrates'  axiom  that 
knowledge  is  virtue,  as  meaning  that  complete,  illuminated 
knowledge  which  by  imagination  sees  through,  behind,  and 
around  things  and  thus  perforce  expresses  itself  in  right 
conduct,  we  are  likewise  justified  in  saying  that  much,  per- 
haps most  crime,  is  the  result  of  limited,  unimaginative 
knowledge.  Likewise  selfishness  as  a  mental  and  social 
quality  is  always  the  result  of  a  certain  mental  squint  or 
astigmatism,    defective    imagination,    especially    inability 

^  C.  N.  Starcke,  La  famille  dans  les  differentes  Societes,  p.  272. 
2  History  of  European  Morals,  1 :  139. 
'  See,  e.g.  Journal  Social  Science,  6  :  149. 

*  Symposium,  "What  the  Worker  Wants,"  conducted  by  the  London 
Daily  Mail,  191 2,  p.  11. 


62  THEORIES    OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

to  imagine  one's  "self"  in  its  correct  proportions  and  in 
its  true  relations  with  others'  selves.  For  if  we  once  grasp 
the  idea  that  society  is  simply  the  aggregate  of  our  images 
of  each  other,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  imagination  is  the  pre- 
requisite not  only  to  social  reform,  to  that  ideal  of  society 
we  dream  of,  but  also  to  any  sort  of  societal  life  at  all.  In- 
deed for  my  fellows  to  exist  in  the  slightest  degree  for  me  as 
social  beings  they  must  be  visualized  ;  and  no  form  of  social 
control  is  possible  without  this  constant  imaging  of  one's 
fellows  and  their  presence.  But  this  is  merely  to  reduce 
my  own  sense  of  my  self  as  a  social  person  to  the  same  terms, 
for,  as  we  have  repeatedly  observed,  I  get  my  self  only  by 
observing  others  and  by  comparing  these  observations  of 
ego  and  alter  in  my  imagination.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say, 
then,  that  a  man  is  just  so  much  of  a  man  as  his  sympathies 
are  wide;  "what  a  person  is  and  what  he  can  understand 
or  enter  into  through  the  life  of  others  are  very  much  the 
same  thing."  Imagination  is  the  social  periscope  through 
which  we  can  see  around  the  rough  corners  of  our  fellows. 
It  is  just  this  abihty  to  put  one's  self  into  others'  places, 
to  enter  into  the  life  of  our  fellows,  to  slip,  with  Balzac, 
into  the  very  skins  of  others,  that  makes  the  great  artist, 
man  of  letters,  poet,  lover  of  men,  or  real  constructive  social 
reformer.  For  it  is  not  some  special  quality  of  altruism 
or  sentimentality,  but  simple  imagination  and  its  correla- 
tive, kindly  sympathy,  both  growing  out  of  a  rich,  compre- 
hensive, and  coherent  experience,  that  form  the  basis  of 
social  ethics  and  of  serious  social  reform.  It  is  likewise 
the  basis  of  our  whole  social  organization  if  we  accept 
Aristotle's  maxim  that  "friendship  or  love  is  the  bond  which 
holds  states  together." 

Foreign  missions,  quite  aside  from  our  opinion  as  to  their 
rehgious  and  economic  value,  appeal  to  us  at  least  on  the 
score  of  their  imaginative  stimulus.     Adam  Smith  observed 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL   PRODUCT  63 

that  we  are  more  moved  by  our  neighbor's  suffering  from  a 
corn  on  his  great  toe  than  by  the  starvation  of  milHons  in 
China.     And   LesHe   Stephen   generaHzes   this   experience 
into  the  maxim,  "My  interests  are  strongest  where  my 
power  of  action  is  greatest."     Instead  of  'power  of  action' 
he  might  better  have  said  'power  of  visuaHzation.'     With 
the  growing  world-organization  of  trade  and  means  of  com- 
munication the  way  begins  to  open  for  wider  circles  of 
visualization,  action,  and  sympathy.     The  man  who  can 
fully  visualize  Central  Africa  or  the  Marquesas  while  not 
neglecting  in  imagination  and  fact  his  next  door  neighbor 
or  the  child  of  the  city  slum  is  just  so  much  more  the  large- 
hearted  citizen  of  the  cosmos,  member  of  a  world  society. 
Such  an  experiment  as  the  First  Universal  Races  Congress 
which  met  in  London,  191 1,  is  a  concrete  instance  of  the 
power  of  imaginative  sympathy  to  pave  the  way  to  better 
international  and  interracial  understandings  and  policies ; 
hence  a  wider  conception  of    the  "self."     It  is    perhaps 
impossible  to  measure  the  impulse  to  religious  tolerance 
and  breadth  which  has  sprung  from  the  appeal  to  the  im- 
agination offered  at  the  World's  Congress  of  Religions  at 
the  Chicago  World's  Fair.     Race  prejudice  and  religious 
prejudice  are  impossible  when  my  imagination  is  working 
at  its  best,  for  every  man  is  my  brother,  is  identified  with 
my  self,  so  long  as  I  can  conceive  him  without  antipathy ; 
and  the  chances  are  ten  to  one  that  if  I  take  the  trouble  to 
learn  of    and    about   him    my  antipathy    vanishes.     The 
maxim   tout  comprendre  tout  pardonner  reduces   to   mere 
tautology  —  one  equals  one  —  for  to  understand  all  leaves 
nothing  to  pardon.     And  to  tolerate  is  the  beginning  of 
understanding. 

Our  sense  of  self,  then,  grows  richer  as  we  perceive  con- 
stantly newer  and  wider  possibilities  of  conduct,  through 
either  direct  contact  or   through  imaginary  relationship 


64  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

with  persons.  It  holds  equally  true  for  sociology  and 
psychology  that  our  self  grows  only  in  proportion  to  our 
world.  We  know  "our  self"  only  as  we  know  our  "other 
self."  Hence  the  absolute  necessity  for  wide  experience. 
The  man  who  wears  blinders  of  indifference  or  prejudice 
is  the  man  who  knows  httle  of  the  world,  therefore  but 
little  of  himself,  and  becomes  what  we  call  narrow-minded. 
Such  being  the  case,  the  wider  the  range  of  alters  the  larger 
and  richer  the  give  and  take  which  is  the  essence  of  ego- 
building,  as  also  of  social  consciousness.  Personality  must 
acquire  a  three-dimensional  activity.  The  third  dimension, 
depth,  can  only  come  from  wide  experience.  Two-dimen- 
sional personality  is  merely  a  reflecting  surface,  mostly 
copy  with  but  little  practice  or  invention,  and  fit  only  for 
automatic,  suggested,  or  reflex  action. 

But  where  shall  this  wide  experience  be  culled?  It 
begins  with  the  mother,  and  with  the  family,  obviously 
enough.  But  is  the  family,  as  some  have  supposed,  a 
sufficiently  wide  pasture  ground  for  the  raising  of  a  full- 
grown  personality  —  a  socially  efficient  self?  Does  it 
offer  that  wide  and  varied  experience  of  persons  and  things 
requisite  for  mature  intelligence  and  conduct?  Does  it 
provide  for  that  expression  of  Good  Will  which  is  ascribed 
to  scientists  and  socialists  —  their  conquest  over  the  mean- 
ness of  concealment,  their  systematic  devotion  of  them- 
selves to  large  impersonal  ends  ? 

Professor  Giddings  in  his  presidential  address  before  the 
American  Sociological  Society  in  St.  Louis,  1910,  said : 
"Now,  habits  are  acquired,  we  say,  by  doing  things,  or 
thinking  things  many  times  over.  That  is  true,  but  it  is 
not  all.  The  repetitions  that  make  up  habit  are  imitations ; 
they  are  copies  of  models  or  examples.  Many  of  our  ele- 
mental and  most  useful  habits  are  imitations  of  parents, 
but,  plainly  if  we  imitated  parents  only,  there  would  be  no 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  65 

national  traits,  and  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  no 
nations.  There  would  be  only  some  millions  of  families, 
each  abiding  by  its  own  mental  and  moral  law.  National 
habits,  and  therefore  national  traits  and  character,  are 
copies  of  those  relatively  conspicuous  models  that  are  widely 
imitated,  irrespective  of  kinship ;  imitated  locally  at  first, 
perhaps,  but  at  length  throughout  a  population." 

Albeit  a  strong  tendency  among  experimental  psycholo- 
gists to  discount  the  imitation  theory,  this  still  remains  a 
fair  statement  of  the  case  for  which  we  have  been  arguing, 
namely,  the  need  of  a  rich  and  varied  pasturage  for  that 
process  of  imitation  and  practice  which  shapes  the  self. 
Where  is  it  to  be  found?  Manifestly  the  family  limits 
by  its  numbers  the  opportunities  for  the  child's  practice. 
His  position  is  largely  one  of  subordination.  His  means 
are  largely  therefore  copy,  and  not  its  necessary  correlative, 
practice.  His  very  imitation  of  his  parents  is  in  part  copy- 
ing second-hand  copy  in  so  far  as  they  reflect  the  larger 
movements  of  the  social  life.  This  second-hand  copy  is 
no  doubt  valuable  in  the  beginning,  for  it  is  selected  from 
an  enormous  mass  which  would  only  serve  to  confuse  the 
child's  indiscriminating  sense  of  values  were  he  projected 
immediately  into  it.  It  is  a  short  cut  and  would  be  su- 
premely valuable  if  the  selections  were  always  wise  and 
socially  sound.  Unfortunately  they  are  not  always  so, 
for  parenthood  does  not  bring  with  it,  per  se,  wisdom  and 
capacity,  and  parental  love  is  by  no  means  self-less ;  it  is 
appropriative  and  frequently  mixed  with  procreative  pride. 
But  were  the  parents  ever  so  wise  and  just  in  their  selection, 
there  must  come  a  time  when  the  child  shall  have  done 
with  mere  second-hand  imitation  and  have  access  to 
original  sources. 

An  education  and  experience  confined  to  the  limits  of 
famihal  life  would  be  "incest"  just  as  surely  as  the  most 


66  THEORIES  OF    SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

flagrant  physical  in-breeding.  As  John  Locke  put  it,  such 
circumscribed  experience  yields  a  pretty  traffic  with  known 
correspondents  in  some  little  creek ;  but  it  hinders  ventur- 
ing out  into  the  great  ocean  of  knowledge.  Life  is  largely 
stress,  but  family  life  is  consciously  opposed  to  strain  and 
conflict,  or  at  least  offers  only  limited  opportunities  for  it. 
By  its  very  physical  proximity  and  intimacy,  family  life 
gives  full  swing  to  imitation,  both  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious. It  is,  therefore,  essentially  conservative.  It  tends 
to  stagnate,  to  recapitulate,  to  venerate  the  past,  to  dis- 
count novelty,  experiment,  and  adventure,  to  encourage 
submissive  receptivity  instead  of  independent  activity. 
Home  is  rather  an  ark  of  refuge  than  a  laboratory.  It  is 
rather  the  place  whither  one  retires  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of 
his  intellectual  rotation  of  crops  than  the  experiment  station 
which  would  discover  the  value  of  and  insist  upon  such  a 
rotation.  The  strength  of  family  life  and  its  social  utility 
should  lie  in  its  exercise  of  sentiment,  of  sympathy,  rather 
than  of  mere  intellectual  interest.  But  so  long  as  marriage 
and  family  life  savor  so  strongly  of  custom,  law,  property, 
and  sensuality,  and  so  little  of  healthy  sentiment  and  social 
responsibility,  they  are  hardly  in  position  to  outfit  children 
with  "selves"  broadly  conceived,  warm  with  sentiment, 
and  socially  valuable. 

Here  we  may  be  permitted  to  record  a  doubt  as  to  the 
validity  of  Sir  Francis  Galton's  claims  for  parental  educa- 
tion. He  says :  ^  "Those  teachings  that  conform  to  the 
natural  aptitudes  of  the  child  leave  much  more  enduring 
marks  than  others.  Now  both  the  teachings  and  the  natural 
aptitudes  of  the  child  are  usually  derived  from  its  parents. 
They  are  able  to  understand  the  ways  of  one  another  more 
intimately  than  is  possible  to  persons  not  of  the  same  blood, 
and  the  child  instinctively  assimilates  the  habits  and  ways 
^  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty,  section  on  "History  of  Twins." 


SELF  AS   A  SOCIAL   PRODUCT  67 

of  thought  of  its  parents.  Its  disposition  is  'educated'  by 
them  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word."  That  is  to  say, 
the  parents  are  best  able  to  determine  the  child's  self. 

But  even  granting  that  parents  by  the  fact  of  their 
relationship  alone  enjoy  any  peculiar  advantage  of  recip- 
rocal knowledge  and  understanding,  it  is  still  far  from  true 
that  the  result  in  self-and-other-self-building,  measured  in 
terms  of  social  efficiency,  would  attain  a  maximum.  There 
is  no  advantage  ipso  facto,  to  the  child  or  to  society,  in 
assimilating  the  "habits  and  ways  of  thought  of  its  parents." 
There  is  rather  a  distinct  disadvantage  save  where  society 
is  Utopian,  or  ranged  on  a  rigid  caste  basis.  A  narrow 
family  feeling  breeds  selfishness,  and  a  selfishness  pecuHarly 
repellent  and  difficult  to  extirpate ;  for,  as  Professor 
Mackenzie  observes,  "The  evil  spirit  is  there  masquerading 
as  an  angel  of  light."  ^  It  is  absolutely  essential  for  a 
growing  man  to  get  outside  his  family  to  achieve  that  en- 
dowment of  sympathetic  imagination  which  alone  can 
deliver  him  from  the  mental  warping  of  a  narrowed  educa- 
tion. Mr.  Wells  shows  clearly  how  this  sort  of  mental 
"incest"  causes  a  great  EngHsh  family  to  think  of  Eng- 
land as  "a  world  of  happy  Hatfields,  cottage  Hatfields, 
villa  Hatfields,  Hatfields  over  the  shop,  and  Hatfields  be- 
hind the  farm  yard,  wickedly  and  wantonly  assailed  and 
interfered  with  by  a  band  of  weirdly  discontented  men"  — 
social  reformers.^ 

But  we  cannot  even  grant  that  parents  understand  their 
children  better  than  others  outside  the  family  circle  can 
hope  to.  The  reverse  is  often  true.  And  the  reason  Is 
this,  that  rarely  do  we  find  a  person,  unless  he  has  been 


'  Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy,  364 ;  cf.  G.  E.  Dawson,  Hartford 
Seminary  Record,  13  :  16. 

"^  New  Worlds,  p.  51.  Cf.  Schmoller,  Grundriss,  etc.,  e.xcerpt  translated 
in  Am.  Jr.  Social.  20  :  521-2. 


68  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

specially  trained  in  psychology,  who  can  recognize  in  the 
child  the  genesis  of  traits  and  characteristics  which  will 
mature  into  those  possessed  by  the  parents.  Even  if  he 
could,  prejudices  of  various  sorts  would  enter  to  confuse 
his  understanding  and  treatment  of  the  problem.  Let  the 
the  reader  recall,  for  example,  Meredith's  Richard  Feverel : 
Feverel  senior  is  a  perfect  illustration  of  Galton's  thesis; 
and  the  complete  breakdown  of  his  educational  pohcy, 
through  misreading  the  boy's  character,  together  with  its 
tragic  results  for  Feverel  junior,  quite  as  perfectly  illus- 
trate the  criticism  here  offered.'^ 

To  that  wider  process  —  definite,  conscious  Social 
Education  —  we  shall  have  to  look  for  the  creation  and 
maintenance  of  socially  valuable  and  efficient  "selves." 
We  cannot  here  go  into  any  details  of  what  this  process 
of  Social  Education  involves.  The  key  to  it  is  simply  this  : 
to  develop  a  dominant  idea  of  the  self  as  devoted  to  the 
building  up  of  a  rich  and  efficient  personality  in  terms  of 
others'  equally  rich  and  efficient  personahties.  In  other 
words,  a  dominant  self  pledged  to  social  justice,  to  the 
creation  of  opportunities  for  the  free  development  of  all 
others'  selves.  Or  to  phrase  it  still  differently,  a  self  con- 
ceived in  the  most  ardent,  flexible,  and  intelHgent  sympathy, 
determined  to  express  that  sympathy  in  brotherhood  — 
Hterally  and  consistently.^  It  is  primarily  a  problem  of 
capturing  the  imagination,  of  creating  centers  of  imita- 
tion, and  of  injecting  a  new  idea  into  the  mores ;  that  is, 
it  is  a  problem  of  making  good  will  "good  form"  in  the 
best  sense.     Can  this  be  done?     It  can  and  must.^     We 

'  Cf.  discussion  in  Letourneau's  Evolution  of  Marriage  and  the  Family, 
356,  etc. 

^  Cf.  Urwick,  Pliilos.  of  Social  Progress,  chaps,  v-vii,  for  somewhat  similar 
point  of  view. 

*  "A  lazy  nation  may  be  changed  into  an  industrious,  a  rich  into  a  poor,  a 
religious  into  a  profane,  as  if  by  magic,  if  any  single  cause,  though  slight, 


SELF   AS  A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  69 

have  already  seen  how,  under  a  stress  of  competition,  aft 
exaggerated  sense  of  property  and  other  disagreeable  phases 
or  corners  of  the  self  have  developed.  The  self  may  be 
identified  with  the  "cause"  or  aim  for  which  one  works  or 
in  which  one  is  interested.  One's  philosophy,  one's  creed, 
class,  party,  business  becomes  literally  himself :  witness  the 
feeling  of  outraged  personal  honor  when  one's  class  morals, 
party  honor,  etc.,  are  impugned.  I  have  heard  an  en- 
thusiastic bank  messenger,  sixteen  years  old,  after  two 
weeks  of  service  speak  famiHarly  of  "our"  bank,  our 
directors,  our  profits,  etc. 

Ribot  says  :  "Nothing  is  more  common  or  better  known 
than  the  momentary  appropriation  of  the  personality  by 
some  intense  and  fixed  idea.  As  long  as  this  idea  occupies 
consciousness,  we  may  say  without  exaggeration  that  it 
constitutes  the  individual.  The  obstinate  pursuit  of  a 
problem,  invention,  or  creation  of  any  kind  represents  a 
mental  state  in  which  the  whole  personality  has  been  drained 
for  the  profit  of  a  single  idea."  ^  Lowell  expressed  the 
same  idea  fehcitously  in  his  poem  Longing.  ("The  thing 
we  long  for,  that  we  are,"  etc.) 

Such  a  dominant  idea  can  become  an  idee  fixe  or  hobby, 
so  that  a  man  may  be  defined  by  his  hobby.  Sterne's  Uncle 
Toby  is  a  classic  example  in  point. ^ 

But  our  own  dominant  self  need  have  nothing  of  the 
dangerous  character  of  the  idee  fixe,  nor  of  the  grotesque 
extravagance  and  annoyance  of  the  hobby.  In  the  doc- 
trine of  the  dominant  social  self-idea  there  lies  no  suggestion 
of  fixity.  The  socially  valuable  self  is  not  rigid.  It  may 
vary  from  day  to  day.     It  may  achieve  and  hold  as  its  right 

or  any  combination  of  causes,  however  subtle,  is  strong  enough  to  change  the 
favorite   and  detested   type  of   character."     Walter  Bagehot,  Physics  6° 
Politics,  chap.  vi. 
>—    ^  Diseases  of  Personality,  1 18-19. 
/        ^  Tristram  Shandy,  chap.  xxiv. 


70  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

that  sacred  inconsistency  for  which  Emerson  argued  so 
eloquently  as  the  essential  mark  of  real  hfe  and  thinking. 
But  with  our  social  self  as  with  Emerson,  the  variations 
and  inconsistencies  will  always  be  within  the  range  of  what 
is  socially  good  and  valuable.  To  Emerson  it  was  never 
an  inconsistent  balancing  or  wavering  between  what  was 
right  and  what  was  wrong.  By  no  means.  His  course 
was  alv/ays  toward  the  true  and  valuable.  If  he  tacked 
hither  and  yon,  if  he  seemed  to  waver  and  hesitate,  it  was 
merely  in  the  attempt  to  choose  the  Best  from  out  several 
possible  Merely  Goods.  Hence  in  the  long  run,  sub  specie 
cBternitas,  so  to  speak,  we  are  consistent  when  we  con- 
stantly manifest  as  our  dominant  self  that  which  socially 
is  most  valuable  and  efficient,  whatever  temporary  day  to 
day  variations  may  appear.  Even  the  tides  of  the  sea 
show  marked  diurnal  variations ;  yet,  in  polar  seas  where 
the  variations  appear  most  considerable,  nobody  would 
doubt  the  general  consistency  of  their  course. 

It  is  only  this  general  consistency  for  good  that  modern 
efficient  rehgion  demands.  Professor  Peabody,  for  ex- 
ample, writes:  "the  Christian  rich  man  ...  is  not  hard 
in  business  and  soft  in  charity,  but  of  one  fiber  throughout. 
His  business  is  a  part  of  his  religion,  and  his  philanthropy 
is  a  part  of  his  business.  He  leads  his  hfe,  he  is  not  led  by 
it."  ^  A  cross  section  of  the  modern  Big-Business  sinner 
reveals  such  a  general  unsoundness  of  fiber,  hypertrophy 
here,  rottenness  there,  ossification  yonder,  that  our  young 
radicals  are  clamoring  for  a  social  poHcy  that  will  administer 
heroic  remedies  to  heal  his  unsoundness  and  force  him  to 
be  of  one  fiber  throughout. 

The  self  struggling  for  life  for  others  as  a  "ruling  passion" 
comes  nearest  this  ideal  of  consistent  good.  For,  if  we  are 
to  beheve  Dr.  Van  Dyke,  in  all  of  us  that  amount  to  any- 

^  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question,  p..  224. 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  71 

thing  (or  at  least  are  worth  writing  about)  there  is  a  ruHng 
passion  which  weaves  "the  stuff  of  human  nature  into 
patterns  wherein  the  soul  is  imaged  and  revealed."  Any 
one  of  the  ordinary  ruling  passions,  romantic  love,  music, 
nature,  honor,  money,  pride,  children,  loyalty,  revenge  — 
those  of  which  Dr.  Van  Dyke  writes  —  requires  to  be  dis- 
cipUned  and  subjected  to  great  broad  rules  of  social  justice 
and  decency.  But  the  self  dominated  by  the  idea  that  it 
is  part  and  parcel  of  its  fellows  and  must  work  out  the  salva- 
tion of  all  together  lest  all  fail,  has  no  need  of  elaborate 
checks  and  discipUnes.  It  finds  poise  and  discipline  in  the 
inertia  of  other  possible  dominant  ideas,  potential  selves, 
and  in  the  drag-weight  of  bodily  consciousness.  Its  stimu- 
lation and  its  safety-valve  lie  alike  in  the  difficulty  of  its 
enterprise.  And  the  enterprise  becomes  all  the  more 
difficult  with  the  growing  variety  and  complexity  of  our 
interests  and  experience,  or  with  the  delicate  sensibility 
of  a  highly  cultivated,  keenly  appreciative  soul.  Henri 
Frederic  Amiel  was  such  a  soul  and  here  is  his  confession : 
"This  inner  identity,  this  unity  of  conviction,  is  all  the 
more  difficult  the  more  the  mind  analyzes,  discriminates, 
and  foresees.  It  is  difficult,  indeed,  for  hberty  to  return 
to  the  frank  unity  of  instinct."  ^ 

But  will  the  dominant  idea  or  ruling  passion  of  the  social 
self  obliterate  the  other  pleasant  and  possible  selves  — 
the  music  lover,  the  poet,  the  wealth-producer,  the  man 
of  honor,  the  nature  worshiper?  Not  in  the  least.  "But 
seek  ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  ...  all  these  things 
shall  be  added  unto  you."  The  Kingdom  of  God  —  justice, 
good-will  —  by  insisting  on  the  socializing  of  opportunity 
for  all  to  enjoy  these  things,  insures  them  absolutely  for 
me.  Heine's  demand  for  Zuckererhsen  fiir  jederman  means 
also  sugar  peas  for  me.  So  that  if  you  choose  to  call 
^Journal  Intime,  April  6,  1851. 


72  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

identifying  myself  with  my  fellows  and  seeking  to  co- 
operate in  hearty  good  will  with  them,  losing  my  hfe,  very 
well ;  but  the  fact  still  remains  that  in  so  doing  I  find  it 
in  deed  and  in  truth.  And  what  is  this  but  formulating 
into  a  conscious  policy  what  humanity,  and  the  animal 
and  vegetable  world  as  well,  have  been  doing  uncon- 
sciously for  eons  as  the  price  of  evolution?  The  principle 
of  commensahty  runs  through  all  nature.  Take,  for 
example,  the  plant  and  animal  hfe  of  the  desert.  There 
is  an  unconscious,  but  no  less  real,  mutual  understanding 
between  plant  and  plant  and  even  between  plant  and  ani- 
mal. Plant  shades  and  feeds  animal ;  animal  digs  and 
fertiUzes  for  plant.  It  may  be  that  misery  loves  com- 
panionship, but  it  is  certain  that  the  harsh  conditions  of 
desert  Hfe  originate  and  enforce  a  soHdarity  between  flora 
and  fauna  which  not  only  alleviates  their  misery  but  saves 
them  from  extinction.^ 

But  we  need  not  go  so  far  to  illustrate  this  principle. 
Every  loaf  of  bread,  every  ounce  of  meat,  every  flagon  of 
wine  or  milk  embodies  this  fundamental  law  of  the  struggle 
for  service  of  others.  If  some  one  objects  that  division  of 
labor,  not  mutuality,  is  emphasized  here,  I  answer  that  it 
is  our  business  to  elevate  mutuahty  to  the  focus  of  con- 
sciousness where  it  may  be  brought  to  white  heat  for  the 
service  of  humanity.  For  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that 
mere  division  of  labor  leads  to  the  most  iron  clad  sort  of 
egotism  and  selfishness,  and  becomes  a  principle  of  retro- 
gression instead  of  progress,  even  in  the  economic  sense  alone. 

But  what  sanctions  exist,  powerful  enough  to  make  this 
service  sense-of-self  dominant?  Any  regnant  interest  can 
only  be  displaced  by  a  stronger  interest  through  what 
Seeley  called  the  expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection.     Will 

^  Cf.  the  late  W  J  McGee's  brilliant  paper  on  "Influences  of  a  Desert 
Environment,"  American  Anthropologist,  8:  350-75. 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  73 

religion  alone,  as  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  thinks,  furnish  the 
motive  for  this  subordination  of  the  self  to  social  ends? 
Is  the  problem,  after  all,  how  to  get  men  to  become  eunuchs 
for  the  Kingdom  of  God's  sake  ?     Is  it  not  rather  a  prob- 
lem of  self-realization  and  identification  with  fellow  men? 
If  this  is  so,  is  it  not  possible  to  secularize  the  process? 
Can  one  not  reaHze  and  live  out  his  social  self  without  the 
leverage  of  some  supernatural  concept  of  the  self?     I  be- 
Heve  we  can.     But  merely  to  substitute  philosophy  for 
religion  will  not  bring  it  generally  to  pass.     Perhaps  we 
may  yet  design  a  philosophy  of  service  which  will  carry  us 
far  on  the  way.     It  will  be  difficult,  however,  to  reach  the 
great  masses  by  any  made-to-order  system  of  philosophy. 
Perhaps  even  a  made-to-order  religion  such  as  is  now  being 
devised  by  the  governing  classes  for  Japan  would  offer 
stronger  sanctions.     It  is  not  improbable  that  shorn  of  its 
grotesqueries  and  absolutism,    Comte's   Rehgion   of  Hu- 
manity might  work ;  for  it  appealed  to  sentiment  even 
more  than  to  intellect,  and  the  sentiment  was  social  and 
healthy.     Yet  there  is  more  of  promise  in  such  a  religious 
movement  as  the  Bahaists.     The  secret  of  its  marvelous 
growth  in  the  past  fifty  years  seems  to  He  in  its  elimination 
of  elaborated  dogma  and  in  its  concentration  of  intellect 
and  feelings  upon  the  two  fundamental  precepts  of  the 
fatherhood  of   God   and   the  brotherhood   of   men.     The 
test  of  the  sincerity  and  power  of  this  movement  is  that 
under  most  trying  and  complex  racial  or  rehgious  antago- 
nisms (as  in  India  or  Turkey)  it  has  actually  made  the  the- 
ory of  brotherhood  a  living  social  fact. 

Dill  tells  us,  that  despite  the  influence  of  Roman  philos- 
ophy upon  the  legislation  of  the  Antonines,  and  its  practical 
efforts  to  give  support  and  guidance  to  moral  life  and  to 
refashion  the  old  paganism  so  as  to  make  it  a  real  spiritual 
force,  it  failed  to  touch  the  people  as  a  whole.     It  failed 


74  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

"as  it  will  probably  fail  until  some  far-off  age,  to  find  an 
anodyne  for  the  spiritual  distresses  of  the  mass  of  men. 
It  might  hold  up  the  loftiest  ideal  of  conduct;  it  might 
revive  the  ancient  gods  in  new  spiritual  power;  it  might 
strive  to  fill  the  interval  between  the  remote  Infinite  Spirit 
and  the  Hfe  of  man  with  a  host  of  mediating  and  succouring 
powers.  But  the  effort  was  doomed  to  failure.  It  was 
an  esoteric  creed,  and  the  masses  remained  untouched  by 
it.  They  longed  for  a  Divine  light,  a  clear,  authoritative 
voice  from  the  unseen  world."  ^  It  is  the  longing  of  even 
strong-minded  men  of  science  for  this  clear,  authoritative 
voice  from  the  unseen  that  gives  the  church  and  dogmatic 
religion  its  age-long  hold.  Hence  we  are  not  surprised  to 
find  Mr.  Chatterton-Hill  claiming  that  it  is  the  Church 
which  embodies  the  supra-social  principles  of  integration 
and  constitutes  that  solidarity  which  alone  can  secure 
adequate  social  adaptation.^  From  the  same  loom  comes 
the  social  philosophy  of  such  young  English  Neo-Catholics 
as  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  Hilaire  Belloc.  The  former's 
criticism  of  Wells'  view  that  selfishness  need  not  be  eternal 
is  typical.  Wells  does  not  believe  in  original  sin.  Chester- 
ton does ;  in  fact,  he  holds  that  an  examination  of  the 
human  soul  shows  original  sin  "almost  the  first  thing  to 
be  believed  in";  and  that  "a  permanent  possibihty  of 
selfishness  arises  from  the  mere  fact  of  having  a  self,  and 
not  from  any  accidents  of  education  or  ill-treatment.  .  .  . 
The  weakness  of  Utopias  is  this,  that  they  take  the  greatest 
difficulty  of  man  and  assume  it  to  be  overcome,  and  then 
give  an  elaborate  account  of  the  overcoming  of  the  smaller 
ones.  They  first  assume  that  no  man  will  want  more  than 
his  share,  and  then  are  very  ingenious  in  explaining  whether 
his  share  will  be  delivered  by  motor  car  or  balloon."  ^     It 

^  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  Preface. 

^  Heredity  and  Selection  in  Sociology,  p.  546.  ^  Heretics,  p.  79. 


SELF  AS   A   SOCIAL   PRODUCT  75 

is  perfectly  evident  that  Mr.  Chesterton  is  here  conceiving 
you  and  me  as  possessing  a  self  much  as  a  child  cleaves  to 
his  penny  savings  bank.  The  self  and  the  bank  are  things 
given  once  for  all,  do  not  change,  and  must  be  given  away 
or  lost  as  a  whole.  But  we  have  already  demonstrated 
almost  ad  nauseam  how  the  self  is  not  a  fixed  entity  but  a 
social  becoming.  The  point  to  such  reactionary  criticism 
is  therefore  turned.  And  the  critic  who  holds  such  a  theory 
of  the  self  or  selfishness  is  simply  the  victim  of  what  Dr. 
Washington  Gladden  calls  Ptolemaic  sociology. 

We  prejudice  our  chances  of  reahzing  our  ideal  of  the 
"social  self"  if  we  neglect  altogether  the  sanctions  of  either 
religion  or  philosophy.  But  the  final  basis  of  any  hope  in 
Social  Education  must  be  laid  on  definite,  conscious  pro- 
grams of  training  in  sociahzing  activity.  ''Education, 
habit,  and  the  cultivation  of  the  sentiments,"  wrote  Mill, 
"will  make  a  common  man  dig  or  weave  for  his  country 
as  readily  as  fight  for  his  country."  There  is  no  need  for 
beating  tom-toms  or  strutting  or  straining  in  high  tragedy 
to  train  children  to  devote  themselves  heartily  and  simply 
to  humdrum  unsensational  doing  for  others.  For  human 
nature  is  already  biased  toward  service.  The  psycholo- 
gists tell  us  that  there  exists  in  all  normal  people  a  genuine 
instinct  (as  instincts  go)  for  seeing  others  well  off  and 
happy.  There  is  no  reason  whatever,  short  of  human 
stupidity  and  inertia,  why  the  child  in  school  should  not 
be  given  opportunity  to  act  and  to  reahze  himself  as  a 
cooperator,  as  a  social  self  devoted  to  the  service  of  his 
mates.  We  have  the  machinery,  the  plant,  the  pedagogical 
systems.  It  makes  very  Kttle  difference  after  all  whether 
you  vote  Froebel  or  Signora  Montessori  for  your  children. 
If  the  purpose  and  spirit  animating  the  system  is  that  of 
social  service  the  name  counts  for  naught. 

It  is  possible  to  believe  so  far  in  the  James-Lange  theory 


76  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

of  the  emotions  that  if  the  school  will  apply  itself  to  train- 
ing the  child  to  act  as  a  social  person  instead  of  as  an  in- 
sulated individual,  sufhcient  unto  himself,  he  will  soon 
develop  the  feehng  of  himself  as  a  social  self ;  this  will  offer 
him  a  new  and  compelhng  sanction  for  acting  socially ;  the 
new  actions  by  a  sort  of  snowball  process  pile  up  and  in- 
tensify the  social  f eehngs ;  and  so  on  indefinitely  until 
the  social  self  becomes  a  firmly  fixed  habit :  the  doer  of  good 
deeds  feels  himself  a  good-deed-doer ;  good-will  becomes 
second  nature.  Our  species,  more  than  any  other,  as 
Comte  said,  needs  duties  to  generate  emotions.  Max 
Beerbohm's  deHghtful  Httle  allegory  of  The  Happy  Hypo- 
crite illustrates  this  process.  A  dissolute  young  lord 
smitten  by  a  noble  and  sincere  love  for  a  beautiful  maiden 
puts  on  the  waxen  mask  of  a  young  saint  to  win  her.  His 
hypocrisy  succeeds  better  than  he  had  planned,  for  it  com- 
pels him  to  renounce  his  evil  ways  and  to  make  restitution. 
At  a  terrible  crisis  later  the  mask  is  torn  oiT,  and  lo !  be- 
neath it  the  face  is  discovered  molded  to  the  noble  hnea- 
ments  of  the  mask.  Three  thousand  years  ago  the  Upan- 
ishads  taught  exphcitly  this  very  doctrine.  "Now  as  a 
man  is  Uke  this  or  hke  that,  according  as  he  acts  and  ac- 
cording as  he  behaves,  so  will  he  be  —  a  man  of  good  acts 
will  become  good,  a  man  of  bad  acts,  bad.  He  becomes 
pure  by  pure  deeds,  bad  by  bad  deeds."  ^  Behold  how 
nature  triumphs  over  herself,  and  the  leopard  changes  his 
spots.  The  precise  point  to  be  seized  now  is  that  since 
James  warned  us  that  we  may  become  hardened  into  old 
fogies  at  twenty-five,  we  must  catch  our  leopards  as  cubs  if 
we  would  change  their  spots  effectively. 

^  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  XV:  176;  Plato's  chance  remark  (Republic 
Bk.  IV)  that  "as  healthy  practices  produce  health,  so  do  just  practices 
produce  justice,"  took  on  a  far-reaching  significance  in  Aristotle  and  became 
a  fundamental  part  of  his  ethical  system.  His  maxim,  "good  actions  produce 
good  habits,"  is  precisely  the  principle  that  we  are  arguing  for  here. 


SELF   AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  77 

As  a  half-way  measure,  until  schools,  churches,  homes, 
and  other  social  institutions  become  infused  by  the  new 
spirit  of  socialized  effort  and  consciously  work  to  develop 
socialized  ''selves,"  other  organizations  for  stimulating 
''social  service"  may  spontaneously  arise  to  prepare  the 
way.  Some  years  ago,  for  example,  the  Agenda  Club  and 
the  Nobodies  Club  were  organized  in  London  for  this  pre- 
cise purpose.  They  are  twentieth  century  Anglo-Saxon 
orders  of  chivalry,  samurai  divested  of  medievalism,  with 
the  avowed  purpose  of  organizing  and  directing  into  prac- 
tical and  useful  channels  the  mass  of  vague  idealism  which 
is  wasted  for  want  of  some  such  form  of  direction.  Human 
nature  may  for  a  long  time  to  come  need  the  props  of  re- 
ligion and  formulated  codes  of  duties  (as  in  fraternities 
and  castes  like  the  samurai),  for  the  attainment  of  its  so- 
cialized sense  of  self ;  but  we  have  the  surest  grounds  for 
beUeving  that  through  rational  education  it  will  come  in 
time  to  more  spontaneous  realization  of  itself  and  be  able 
to  discard  every  suggestion  of  priggishness  or  condescension. 

Let  us  now  review  briefly  the  ground  we  have  traveled 
in  this  study.  The  kernel  of  the  whole  matter  is  that 
human  nature  is  not  a  fixed  quantity.  It  is  infinitely 
diverse  and  infinitely  malleable ;  infinitely  sensitive  to 
change.  It  is  a  weathercock ;  it  is  thistledown  rather 
than  the  fixed  star  or  adamant  we  are  urged  to  believe.  It 
is  not  altogether  the  nature  of  things ;  human  nature  is 
modifiable  by  human  will,  as  Lowes  Dickinson  reminds  us. 
This  we  saw  clearly  in  primitive  men.  Their  mystical 
and  elastic  concepts  of  their  "persons,"  their  identification 
of  self  with  the  group,  cosmic  powers  and  processes,  the 
universal  beHef  in  metamorphosis,  "possession,"  reincarna- 
tion, "contagion  of  quahties,"  indicate  historically  and 
genetically  a  sound  basis  for  our  beHef  that  the  self  is  a 
function  of   the  will,   and  is   socially  determined.    From 


78  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

psychology  we  gathered  the  fact  that  we  are  a  bundle  of 
potential  selves  and  attain  unity  through  unified  activity ; 
that  a  dominant  activity  will  build  up  and  color  a  dominant 
self ;  that  the  social  self  is  the  real  self  because  the  idea  of 
self  as  a  member  of  a  coherent  group  becomes  a  dominant 
idea  in  all  normal  persons.  Social  psychology  and  sociology 
show  us  how  this  social  self  is  built  up  out  of  social  ex- 
perience ;  how  social  life  furnishes  not  only  the  mold  but 
even  the  very  materials  that  are  poured  into  it  for  the  cast- 
ing of  a  social  self;  how  it  is  no  mere  metaphor  to  insist 
that  through  the  meaning  of  "us"  we  learn  of  "me,"  and 
that  the  self  is  thus  a  social  product.  We  are  all  of  us  part 
and  parcel  of  each  other.  And  it  is  the  very  community  of 
our  selves  (the  old  "Communion  of  the  Saints")  that  has 
hauled  us  up  out  of  the  Eocene  pit  and  made  us  men  out 
of  protoplasm.  This  identification  of  our  selves  with  our 
fellows  we  found  to  be  a  real  gain  in  breadth  and  freedom, 
instead  of  a  suicidal  crushing  of  our  own  wills  and  person- 
alities. The  key  to  such  an  identification  of  self  with 
other-self  as  would  be  socially  valuable  we  discovered  to 
be  "efficient  imagination,"  the  power  to  tolerate,  to  sympa- 
thize with,  and  to  visualize  others'  selves.  But  such  an 
elastic  imagination  requires  a  wide  range  of  social  experi- 
ence which  in  our  opinion  can  come  only  from  a  wider 
definition  and  practice  of  education ;  in  other  words,  from 
social  education.  And  in  social  education  we  find  the 
means  ready  to  hand  for  that  molding  and  fashioning  of 
the  sense  of  self  which  is  the  prerequisite  to  any  conscious 
plan  of  progress  towards  the  new  worlds  of  which  we  dream. 
Through  social  education  men  will  realize  and  actually  live 
out  that  prime  social  law  long  ago  glimpsed  by  the  Roman 
Emperor-sage :  that  they  were  born  for  the  service  and 
benefit  of  each  other.  The  method,  so  far  as  it  can  be 
compressed  into  a  single  phrase,  must  be  to  develop  in  the 


SELF  AS  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  79 

child's  mind  the  dominating  thought  of  himself  as  a  con- 
tributing personality,  and  to  project  this  dominant  concept 
upon  the  plane  of  imagination. 

Thus  have  we  accepted  frankly  the  challenge  that  human 
nature  is  forever  fixed  and  therefore  unadapted  to  social 
betterment.  Of  the  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  problem 
of  society  and  social  change  (the  individual  on  the  one 
hand,  the  mass  and  its  environment  on  the  other) ,  we  have 
now  finished  the  discussion  of  the  personal  element  in  con- 
trolled or  purposive  social  change,  namely  the  problem  of 
the  human  self  and  its  manipulation.  We  must  now  try 
to  find  out  the  meaning  of  social  change ;  to  give  a  precise 
definition  to  social  change  conceived  as  progress  or  better- 
ment, to  determine  along  what  path  or  paths  human  per- 
sonaHty  can  best  express  itself  in  order  to  secure  improve- 
ment. This  will  involve  a  critical  analysis  of  what  the  word 
progress  covers  and  the  various  tests  by  which  it  may  be 
identified. 


PART    II 

THE   CONCEPT  AND   CRITERIA  OF    PROGRESS 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE   CONCEPT   OF  PROGRESS 


It  is  perhaps  true  that  "the  fundamental  task  of  the 
sociologist  is  to  furnish  a  theory  of  social  progress."  But 
it  is  not  a  task  to  be  rushed  at  Kght-heartedly.  Indeed, 
we  approach  it  much  as  Huxley  screwed  himself  up  for  his 
famous  Romanes  Lecture  on  Evolution  and  Ethics.  He 
wrote  jocosely  to  his  friends  calling  himself  an  egg  dancer 
and  applying  other  epithets  indicating  the  difficulty  and 
delicacy  of  the  undertaking.  The  attempt  to  formulate  a 
theory  of  progress  meets  precisely  the  accumulated  store 
of  misconception,  prejudice,  and  half  truths  which  Huxley 
had  to  face  in  his  apphcation  of  the  evolutionary  formula 
to  ethics.  For  we  must  remember  that  there  are  three 
very  well-marked  classes  of  opinion  regarding  this  whole 
matter  of  progress.  There  are  the  impressionistic  opti-  ^ 
mists  who  know  from  the  general  'feel'  of  things  that 
God's  in  his  heavens  and  all's  progressively  better  for  the 
world.  They  erect  a  particular  into  a  universal  and  general- 
ize a  good  digestion  or  personal  good  fortune  in  love  or 
business.  There  are  the  pessimists  who  insist  that  retro-  J3) 
gression  or  decadence,  not  progress,  is  the  law  of  social 
life.  Note  that  pessimism,  Hke  its  opposite,  is  frequently 
a  generalization  of  states  of  health  or  luck.  And  there  are 
the  Q^iiics  who  laugh  and  tell  us  that  like  squirrels  in  a  cage,  ^-^ 
or  convicts    on  a  tread-mill,  we  go  through  the  motions 

83 


84  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

but  get  nowhere.  Perhaps  history  can  decide  which  is 
correct.  But  in  order  to  read  history  aright  the  student 
of  sociology  must  reject  all  three  of  the  attitudes  just  ex- 
posed ;  he  must  attain  the  scientific  and  critical  mind 
which  rejects  all  mere  impressionism  and  goes  after  con- 
crete facts  and  tests.  Surely  the  stream  of  history  is  no 
more  vague  than  the  stream  of  individual  consciousness. 
Consciousness  can  be  tested,  measured,  and  compared. 
The  history  of  human  society  should  likewise  yield  to 
measurements  of  depth  and  composition,  ebb  and  flow. 


But  to  make  history  really  mean  anything  we  must 
somehow  or  other  grasp  the  time  element,  we  must  get 
some  kind  of  cosmological  perspective.  Only  by  getting 
a  gHmpse  of  the  enormous  span  of  years  through  which 
humanity  has  traveled  can  one  have  the  remotest  hint  of 
the  evolutionary  process,  whether  you  call  it  drifting  or 
stream  headed  for  some  vaster  deep.  As  a  suggestive 
mechanical  device  I  should  recommend  the  History  Clock 
as  sketched  on  the  opposite  page  or  in  the  form  adapted 
by  Professor  Robinson. 

"Let  us  imagine,"  he  says,  "the  whole  history  of  man- 
kind crowded  into  twelve  hours,  and  that  we  are  Hving  at 
noon  of  the  long  human  day.  Let  us,  in  the  interest  of 
moderation  and  convenient  reckoning,  assume  that  man 
has  been  upright  and  engaged  in  seeking  out  inventions 
for  only  two  hundred  and  forty  thousand  years.  Each 
hour  on  our  clock  will  then  represent  twenty  thousand 
years,  each  minute  three  hundred  and  thirty-three  and  a 
third  years.  For  over  eleven  and  a  half  hours  nothing  was 
recorded.  We  know  of  no  persons  or  event ;  we  only  infer 
that  man  was  living  on  the  earth,  for  we  find  his  stone  tools, 
bits  of  his  pottery,  and  some  of  his  pictures  of  mammoths 
and  bison.     Not  till  twenty  minutes  before  twelve  do  the 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS 


85 


Evolutionary  Types  of  Man  Arranged  on  a  24-Hoitr  Clock 
Each  Hour  of  Which  Represents  25,000  Years 


H  9, 

13  10 

12  11 

~i , 

Modern   Man    (including   the   Iron,   Bronze,    and   New   Stone   Ages) 

less  than  half  an  hour 10,000  years 

Cro-Magnon  type  one  hour 10-25,000  years 

Neanderthal  type  two  hours 25-40,000  years 

Piltdown  type  five  hours 125,000  years 

Heidelberg  type  ten  hours 250,000  years 

Pithecanthropos  twenty  hours 500,000  years 

(Estimates  based  on  Osborn's  Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age.) 


86  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

earliest  vestiges  of  Egyptian  and  Babylonian  civilization 
begin  to  appear.  The  Greek  literature,  philosophy,  and 
science  of  which  we  have  been  accustomed  to  speak  as 
"ancient,"  are  not  seven  minutes  old.  At  one  minute 
before  twelve  Lord  Bacon  wrote  his  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing .  .  .  and  not  half  a  minute  has  elapsed  since  man 
first  began  to  make  the  steam  engine  do  his  work  for  him. 
.  .  .  Thales,  Pythagoras,  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle,  Hip- 
parchus,  Lucretius  —  are  really  our  contemporaries."  ^ 

In  order  properly  to  estimate  whether  humanity  has  pro- 
gressed or  not,  we  must  assume  the  possibility  of  move- 
ment, then  set  up  a  starting  point  from  which  to  measure 
our  movement,  if  there  has  been  any,  and  its  direction. 
Only  by  setting  a  line  of  stakes  from  bank  to  bank  of  its 
mountain  channel  and  by  noting  that  the  Hne  became 
bowed  in  the  middle  could  Tyndall  prove  the  flow  of  an 
Alpine  glacier.  We  must,  then,  take  a  look  at  certain 
phases  of  very  primitive  life  and  use  them  as  our  stakes 
for  determining  whether  we  have  moved  onward,  or  whether, 
like  Alice  in  Through  the  Looking  Glass,  we  have  been  run- 
ning and  running,  gasping  for  breath,  through  centuries 
upon  centuries,  only  to  find  ourselves  at  the  last  under  the 
very  tree  from  which  we  started. 

To  estabhsh  man's  complete  pedigree,  to  relate  him 
properly  to  his  fellows  in  the  animal  world,  we  must  pre- 
suppose a  state  of  culture  far  below  any  now  existent  on 
earth.  To  conceive  his  primeval  condition  one  must  strip 
away  bit  by  bit  almost  everything  that  constitutes  what 
we  know  as  the  arts,  refinements,  and  comforts  of  life. 
The  earhest  men  we  have  any  traces  of  stalked  naked  even 
in  rough  weather,  were  without  the  arts  of  spinning,  or 
cutting  and  fastening  together  of  skins,  or  pottery,  or  agri- 
culture, or  fire ;    with  no  weapons  but  perhaps  spear  and 

^  J.  H.  Robinson,  The  New  History,  239-40 ;  cf.  Ward,  Pure  Sociology, 
38-40. 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  87 

club,  and  no  domestic  animal  save  the  dog.  There  have 
been  in  historic  times  tribes  manifesting  one  or  more  of 
these  lacks,  even  that  of  fire.  Indeed  in  the  first  decade 
of  the  twentieth  century  a  reputable  ethnographer  an- 
nounces the  discovery  of  a  tribe  in  Dutch  New  Guinea  so 
primitive  that  it  knows  nothing  of  pottery,  of  metals,  or  of 
the  use  of  fire  in  preparing  food.  If  such  a  condition  could 
obtain  at  the  high  noon  of  civiUzation  (according  to  our 
History  Clock)  it  is  altogether  probable  that  in  the  twilight 
hours  of,  say,  one  to  six  o'clock,  the  state  of  man  must 
have  been  at  least  as  low,  perhaps  lower. 

Neither  was  primitive  man  necessarily  happy.  If  his 
ignorance  spelled  bliss  it  was  joy  so  interlarded  with  vague 
uncertainties  and  terrors  that  it  was  at  least  dubious  and 
paradoxical.  He  hved  in  an  environment  of  fears ;  fear 
of  food  shortage,  fear  of  the  medicine  man,  fear  of  an 
enemy's  magic,  or  fear  of  being  accused  himself  of  prac- 
ticing magic,  and  a  thousand  other  fears  that  always 
hover  about  a  twiUght  of  intelligence. 

If  primitive  man  was  not  the  'happy  savage,'  neither 
was  he  free  as  the  idyllic  imaginations  of  eighteenth  century 
philosophers  saw  him.  "It  is  difficult,"  writes  a  noted 
English  missionary,  "to  exhaust  the  customs  and  small 
ceremonials  of  a  savage  people.  Custom  regulates  the 
whole  of  a  man's  actions  —  his  bathing,  washing,  cutting 
his  hair,  eating,  drinking,  and  fasting.  From  his  cradle  to 
his  grave  he  is  the  slave  of  ancient  usage.  In  his  life  there 
is  nothing  free,  nothing  original,  nothing  spontaneous,  no 
progress  towards  a  higher  and  better  life,  and  no  attempt 
to  improve  his  condition,  mentally,  morally,  or  spiritually."  ^ 
Is  this  a  picture  of  freedom  ?     After  making  due  allowance 

^  Rev.  J.  Macdonald,  "  Manners,  Customs,  Superstitions,  and  Religions 
of  South  African  Tribes,"  in  Journal  of  the  Royal  Anthropological  Institute 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  xx,  140 ;  cf.  Curr.  The  Australian  Race,  i,  51. 


88  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

for  the  writer's  superlative  negation,  and  recognizing  that 
there  must  have  been  some  positive,  spontaneous  force  in 
savagery,  some  proddings  to  variation,  else  we  should  not 
be  here  to  tell  the  tale,  after  all  this  toning  down,  the 
picture  is  anything  but  attractive  or  reassuring. 
^  Primitive  man  speculated  httle  or  not  at  all.  If  the 
processes  of  nature,  the  course  of  the  seasons,  movements 
of  sun  and  moon,  were  considered  at  all,  it  was  in  relation 
to  daily  bread.  His  philosophy  and,  for  that  matter,  his 
rehgion,  reduced  to  the  lowest  terms  of  self -maintenance 
and  self-perpetuation.  His  heaven  was  a  place  of  ease 
and  full  belhes.  And  it  was  only  a  day-to-day  philosophy. 
The  savage  had  no  past ;  and  posterity  or  future  existence 
and  provision  for  their  maintenance  came  only  later  with 
growing  intelligence,  religion,  and  other  social  institutions. 
When  I  say  self-maintenance,  I  do  not  mean  to  assume 
hghtly  that  primitive  life  was  marked  by  '  each  for  himself 
and  all  against  all'  even  in  the  matter  of  food.  For  in  all 
probabihty,  as  we  have  already  seen,  man  could  only  have 
become  man  by  reason  of  his  previous  long  sub-human 
training  in  cooperation  and  associated  effort.  But  even 
this  crude  association  was  insufficient  usually  to  secure 
thrift  and  foresight.  Many  of  the  American  Indians  within 
the  last  fifty  years  had  not  yet  learned  from  hard  experi- 
ence to  lay  up  stores  for  a  rainy  day.  Mr.  George  Kennan, 
commenting  on  the  periodic  famines  and  starvation  in 
North  East  Siberia,  observes  that  no  experience,  however 
severe,  no  suffering,  however  great,  teaches  the  natives  pru- 
dence.^ In  general,  the  Bushman,  whom  Fritsch  calls 
"  the  wretched  child  of  the  moment,"  might  be  taken  as 
typical  of  savagery.  If  the  savage  fails  to  store  up  even 
food  for  the  rainy  day,  his  failure  to  store  up  capital  for 
use  in  future  production  is  still  more  apparent. 

^  Tent  Life  in  Siberia,  384  fif. 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  89 

This  uncertainty  of  the  food  quest,  and  primitive  man's 
lack  of  machinery  and  institutions  for  conquering  the  un- 
certainty, account  for  the  narrowness  of  his  range  of  Ufe 
interests.  Hence  we  need  not  be  surprised  to  find  that 
primitive  language  reflects  this  narrowness  in  its  paucity 
of  terms  for  the  more  complex  and  refined  hfe-processes. 
Its  stock  of  broad  concepts  is  extremely  meager.  The 
narrowing  process  is  observable  further  in  the  childish 
standards  of  social  value,  in  volatility,  lack  of  persistent 
purpose,  immature  self-control,  and  naive  sense  of  self,  as 
we  have  repeatedly  pointed  out. 

In  calling  attention  to  primitive  magic  and  other  super- 
stitions there  is  no  thought  of  condemnation.  For  super- 
stition is  only  a  term  of  degree.  It  is  not  so  much  positive 
error  as  incomplete  truth,  and  is  by  no  means  peculiar  to 
savage  times.  For  we  ourselves  live  in  a  perpetual  bath 
of  superstitious  survivals  or  in  superstitions  of  our  own 
making.  Superstition  is  not  something  imposed  from  with- 
out or  separate  from  other  elements  of  Hfe.  It  is  an  attempt 
to  meet  the  problems  —  principally  ills  —  of  Hfe,  to  set  up 
a  working  hypothesis,  a  life  philosophy.  It  is  just  as  much 
a  tool  for  the  furthering  of  life  interests  as  an  ax,  a  spear, 
fire,  medicine,  or  government.  If  civilized  man  makes 
less  use  of  bald  superstitions,  it  is  only  because  he  has  in- 
vented better  tools  for  accompHshing  the  same  work .  Hence 
myth  and  science  are  one  in  essence  and  origin.  Yet  hav- 
ing premised  this  much  we  cannot  dodge  the  fact  that 
primitive  hfe  was  surrounded  by  a  baffling  universe  of 
mystery  and  uncertainty  to  which  only  the  rule-of-thumb 
empiricism  of  superstition  gave  any  clew  at  all.  It  is  un- 
deniable that  the  darkness  is  less  extensive  and  less  im- 
penetrable now  than  to  our  savage  forbears. 

Primitive  ignorance  expressed  itself  also  in  very  hazy 
ideas  of  kinship,  relationship,  and  the  whole  process  of  pro- 


90  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

creation.  This  of  course  marked  early  domestic  institu- 
tions. The  family  as  we  know  it  can  hardly  be  said  to 
have  existed.  It  was  based  not  on  affection  or  desire  for 
the  joys  of  home,  but  rather  upon  economic  necessities, 
the  desire  of  the  male  to  exploit  the  female  and  her  children. 
There  was,  to  be  sure,  a  certain  biologic  or  instinctive  attach- 
ment between  mother  and  child,  but  children  failed  to 
receive  that  rational  sort  of  care  and  affection  which  we 
attribute  to  true  parenthood.  Education  was  largely 
picked  up,  as  one  writer  puts  it,  "quite  as  a  young  fowl 
learns  to  scratch  and  get  its  food."  Children  early  attained 
economic  independence  and  deserted  the  family  circle. 
Family  affections  were  thin  and  fleeting.  Marriage  was  a 
brittle  and  transitory  bond ;  chastity  practically  un- 
known ;  divorce  and  separation  rather  the  rule  than  the 
exception.  Children  were  valued  rather  as  chattels  than 
as  objects  of  affection,  and  means  of  parental  training. 
They  were  killed  if  in  the  way,  sold  into  slavery,  even  eaten. 
Infanticide  is  almost  universal  in  savage  Hfe,  though  the 
motives  vary.  And  infant  mortality,  due  to  parental 
ignorance  of  child  hygiene,  reaches  such  proportions  that 
we  sometimes  wonder  how  enough  survived  to  maintain 
the  thread  of  human  generation.  On  the  other  hand,  fiHal 
respect  is  scanty  and  short  lived.  The  aged  who  can  no 
longer  'pay  their  way'  are  suffered  to  perish  or  deliber- 
ately sacrificed.  That  the  motives  were  not  ostensibly 
brutal  only  signifies  that  standards  of  sentiment  or  deUcacy 
or  the  fitness  of  things  were  still  low.  Early  human  groups 
carry  little  "dead  weight."^  The  pressure  of  life  condi- 
tions scales  down  the  number  of  dependents  which  a  society 
can  safely  bear. 

Such  savage  institutions  and  practices  as  cannibahsm, 

^  "Dead  weight"  or  bouches  iniitiles  is  a  statistical  term  used   to   cover 
children  under  15  and  adults  over  60. 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  91 

slavery,  torture  of  captives  and  suspects,  need  only  to  be 
mentioned  in  passing.  To  say  that  cannibalism  was  good 
economy  and  that  slavery  was  a  distinct  economic  advance 
over  cannibalism  because  the  captive's  labor  power  was 
more  advantageous  than  the  flesh  from  his  bones,  after  all 
witnesses  to  a  very  rudimentary  state  of  economic  develop- 
ment. And  torture  or  blood  revenge  or  lex  talionis  may 
also  be  set  down  as  marks  of  a  very  crude  juridical  organi- 
zation. 

From  whatever  standpoint  we  regard  primitive  life,  then, 
whether  from  the  economic,  juridical,  moral,  or  domestic ; 
whether  we  consider  the  quality  or  content  of  primitive 
mind,  its  limited  range,  its  superstitions,  its  lack  of  pru- 
dence and  foresight ;  or  whether  we  have  regard  to  the 
bareness  and  lack  of  arts  and  comforts  which  mark  savage 
life,  we  can  come  to  but  one  conclusion,  namely,  that  life 
at  this  level  is  bald,  crude,  and  raw.  Common  sense  and 
our  own  experience  unite  to  testify  that  we  have  outstripped 
the  meager  and  painful  life  of  our  forbears.  Such  ques- 
tions as  how  we  did  it,  was  it  necessary  or  merely  accidental, 
does  this  past  warrant  any  conclusion  about  the  future, 
still  remain.  These  are,  perhaps,  the  most  difficult  prob- 
lems sociology  has  to  answer.  For  social  development  is 
tremendously  complex,  complex  as  life  itself.  It  involves 
a  solution  of  such  problems  as  'social  causation,'  'social 
forces,'  and  such  distinctions  as  those  between  'change,' 
'evolution,'  'development,'  and  'progress.' 


Progress  is  a  human  concept.  So  very  human,  indeed, 
that  everybody  conceives  it  after  his  own  fashion.  It 
belongs  perhaps  rather  to  the  arts  of  life  or  philosophy 
than  to  either  the  exact  physical  or  the  social  sciences. 


92  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Physical  science  knows  only  change,  not  progress.  Prog- 
ress always  involves  a  standard  of  values  and  of 
achievement.  It  is  telle,  at  least  to  the  degree  of  assuming 
that  if  humanity  is  moving,  it  is  moving  somewhere, 
toward  some  goal.  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  states  the 
literary-religious  view  of  this  question  thus : 

"Nobody  has  any  business  to  use  the  word  "progress"  unless 
he  has  a  definite  creed  and  a  certain  cast-iron  code  of  morals.  No- 
body can  be  progressive  without  being  doctrinal ;  I  might  almost 
say  that  nobody  can  be  progressive  without  being  infallible  —  at 
any  rate,  without  believing  in  some  infallibility.  For  progress  by 
its  very  name  indicates  a  direction ;  and  the  moment  we  are  in  the 
least  doubtful  about  the  direction,  we  become  in  the  same  degree 
doubtful  about  the  progress."  ^ 

To  be  sure,  the  thesis  is  here  set  down  in  somewhat  ultra- 
montane fashion.  But  we  all  lend  ourselves  to  a  charge  of 
ultramontanism  whenever  we  set  up  a  standard  of  values 
and  attempt  to  measure  the  movement  of  humanity  by  it. 
It  remains,  however,  to  step  beyond  the  merely  dogmatic 
and  to  demonstrate  as  objectively  as  possible  the  validity 
of  our  standard.  In  taking  this  step  one  should  not  be 
required  to  state  with  absolute  geographical  exactness  the 
latitude  and  longitude  of  society's  destination.  Possibly 
it  is  sufficient  to  hint  at  the  general  trend  and  direction  of 
movement.  The  final  bourne  may  be  guessed  at  least 
from  this  trend. 

But  when  we  say  that  progress  is  a  human  concept  we 
do  not  mean  that  it  is  an  'innate  idea.'  On  the  contrary 
it  is  an  acquired  characteristic  won  by  selection  and  pre- 
served and  transmitted  by  social  heredity.^  It  may  be 
that  the  idea  of  progress  is  a  gross  illusion.     It  is  possible 

^  Heretics,  p.  36. 

^  Cf.  De  Greef,  Lois  Sociologiques,  167. 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  93 

that  it  is  simply  the  sense  of  movement  which  the  squirrel 
has  in  his  rotary  cage.  But  it  is  none  the  less  one  of  the 
most  persistent  illusions  which  selection  has  preserved  in 
our  race  history,  and  for  this  if  for  no  other  reason  demands 
respectful  treatment.^  Whether  the  behef  has  really  been 
of  utility  or  not  is  another  question.  Kant  held  that  the 
destiny  of  the  whole  human  species  is  toward  continued 
progress,  and  that  we  accomplish  it  "by  fixing  our  eyes 
on  the  goal,  which  though  a  pure  ideal,  is  of  the  highest 
value  in  practice,  for  it  gives  a  direction  to  our  efforts,  con- 
formable to  the  intentions  of  Providence."  Yet  it  is  per- 
missible to  doubt  the  necessity  of  such  a  belief  to  evoke 
human  efforts  ;  for  if  we  may  trust  Balfour,  the  best  efforts 
of  mankind  have  never  been  founded  upon  the  belief  in  an 
assured  progress  towards  a  terrestrial  millennium.- 

Both  the  word  and  the  idea,  progress,  are  relatively  new. 
In  general  the  thought  of  antiquity  clung  to  the  decadence 
concept  rather  than  to  that  of  development.  The  pinch  of 
poverty,  the  mutability  of  things  human,  the  lack  of 
materials  upon  which  to  arrive  at  the  idea  of  'humanity' 
as  a  universal  —  the  unity  of  the  human  species  —  a  similar 
lack  of  materials  which  might  declare  a  chain  of  sequences 
in  the  whole  animal  series,  conspired  with  the  'cake  of 

1  Any  follower  of  Professor  Sumner  would  at  this  point  naturally  say  the 
illusion  of  progress  has  no  other  basis  than  the  folkways ;  that  is,  it  is  one 
phase  of  the  mores  of  optimism.  We  are  not  surprised  to  find  Professor 
Keller  {Societal  Evolution,  p.  198)  declaring :  "it  is  evident  that  it  is  man's 
earthly  destiny,  under  some  powerful  natural  constraint,  to  persist  in  setting 
up  his  reason  against  'natural  law.'  He  will  continue  to  do  so.  Hence 
the  objections  based  upon  misgivings  and  fear,  however  strong  theoretically, 
fall  out  of  practical  reckoning ;  that  a  thing  looks  doubtful  or  impossible  has 
never  seriously  deterred  man  from  attempting  it  if  he  has  wanted  to  —  and 
sometimes  his  assault  has  not  been  a  failure."  That  last  somewhat  grudging 
admission  inclines  one  to  remind  any  cynic  that  a  great  scientist  like  Huxley 
had  no  patience  with  people  who  "think  the  difficulties  of  disproving  a  thing 
are  as  good  as  direct  evidence  in  its  favor." 

2  Kant,  Criticism  of  Herder,  quoted  by  Marvin,  The  Living  Past,  217; 
Balfour,  A  Fragment  on  Progress,  281. 


94  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

custom'  and  the  system  of  social  status  to  obscure  the 
vision  of  advance.  Occasionally  only  a  voice  like  that  of 
Varro  disputed  the  decadence  theory.  And  although 
Christianity  is  credited  with  "the  first  dawning  sense  of 
human  progression,"  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  chief 
emphasis  was  laid  upon  progression  to  and  in  another  world  : 
this  world  was  the  scene  of  the  Fall  of  Man ;  his  rise  was 
to  be  accomplished  rather  by  denying  this  in  favor  of  the 
world  to  come.  The  advance  in  human  knowledge  and  in 
control  over  nature  has  made  possible  both  a  wider  scien- 
tific view  and  the  newer  mores  of  optimism  whose  child  is 
the  ideal,  progress. 

It  is  fairly  obvious,  then,  that  progress  is  not  synony- 
mous with  change ;  for  change  may  be  for  better  or  for 
worse ;  it  means  mere  quantitative  variation,  and  implies 
no  idea  of  values.  The  biologist  watching  a  guinea  pig  that 
has  been  inoculated  with  poison  and  produces  a  litter  of 
degenerate  young,  notes  that  there  has  been  a  change,  a 
breaking  down  of  certain  structures.  But  he  cannot  speak 
of  progress  or  retrogression,  except  in  the  loose  sense  of 
development,  without  adding  some  extra-scientific  concept 
to  that  of  organic  change ;  for  progress  implies  ameliora- 
tion, an  altogether  human  notion  except  in  so  far  as  more 
perfect  adaptation  might  be  called  progress.  In  the  case 
of  the  guinea  pig  the  adaptation  test  would  hardly  serve, 
since  from  the  standpoint  of  pure  science  the  inoculated 
specimen  is  forced  to  adapt  to  prescribed  conditions ;  it  is 
not  a  question  of  a  better  or  a  worse  guinea  pig,  except  as  it 
happens  to  serve  or  fail  to  serve  well  the  experimenter's 
purposes.  Hence  the  formula  imputed  not  altogether  justly 
to  Bergson  (life  =  change  =  progress)  is  unsatisfactory : 
to  say  that  all  is  process,  perennial  becoming,  offers  in  no 
sense  a  tangible  qualitative  judgment. 

Nor  is  progress  mere  evolution.     Progress  is  evolution 


THE  CONCEPT  OE  PROGRESS  95 

measured  by  an  assumed  standard  of  human  values.  Evo- 
lution may  or  may  not  spell  progress ;  progress  is  only  one 
among  many  possible  turns  to  evolution ;  degeneration  is 
always  a  lurking  possibility,  whether  in  the  form  of  lessened 
racial  vitality  or  of  lost  arts  of  life.^  Hence  the  impression 
of  polar  sterility  we  get  from  such  a  philosophic  statement 
of  the  law  of  progress  as  Mr.  Fiske's  :  "The  Evolution  of 
Society  is  a  continuous  establishment  of  psychical  relations 
within  the  Community,  in  conformity  to  physical  and 
psychical  relations  arising  in  the  Environment;  during 
which,  both  the  Community  and  the  Environment  pass 
from  a  state  of  relatively  indefinite,  incoherent  homo- 
geneity to  a  state  of  relatively  definite,  coherent  hetero- 
geneity ;  and  during  which  the  Constituent  Units  of  the 
Community  become  ever  more  distinctly  individuated."  ^ 
Our  hearts  cleave  perhaps  even  less  to  M.  De  Greef's  con- 
cept of  organization  and  progress  as  synonymous.  "Social 
progress,"  he  says,  "is  directly  proportional  to  the  mass, 
to  the  differentiation,  and  to  the  coordination  of  the  social 
elements  and  organs."  ^  Social  evolution  only  attains 
significance  when  it  is  interpreted  in  terms  of  human  welfare. 
Hence  we  ask  if  the  purpose  of  social  evolution  is  to  pro- 
duce at  some  far  distant  time  a  limited  but  perfect  social 
fabric,  a  sort  of  Super-Society ;  or  if  it  is  to  weave  an  age- 
long roll  of  crazy  patchwork,  teeming  with  variety,  with 

^  There  is  no  lack  of  evidence  that  arts  of  the  greatest  utility  have  dis- 
appeared or  degenerated,  even  such  basic  inventions  as  the  bow  and  arrow, 
pottery,  the  canoe.  Rivers  cites  numerous  examples  with  a  suggestive 
discussion  of  the  reasons  for  such  disappearances  and  degradations  in  his 
essay,  "The  Disappearance  of  Useful  Arts,"  in  Festskrift  tillegnad  Edvard 
Westermarck,  pp.  109-130. 

^  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  ii,  223  ;  cf.  H.  Spencer,  Progress  Its  Law 
and  Cause. 

^  Le  Transformisme  Social,  pp.  295,  353,  etc.  Let  the  reader  derive  what 
succulence  he  can  from  Mikhalovsky's  formula:  "Progress  is  the  gradual 
approach  toward  integrality  of  the  indivisibles,  and  thus  to  the  subdivided 
and  redivided  division  of  labor  among  men." 


96  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

contrasts,  with  incongruities.  Does  the  beauty  lie  in  the 
length  of  the  roll,  or  in  the  variety  of  its  patterns,  or  in  the 
final  web  for  which  the  weavings  of  the  past  were  mere 
practicings  and  experiments?  Whatever  the  answer,  the 
very  fact  that  such  questions  are  asked  indicates  an  irre- 
ducible tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  think  in  terms  of 
purpose  and  design.  Humanity  and  its  petty  doings  and 
purposes  may  not  be  the  end  and  aim  of  social  evolution, 
but  humanity  is  interested  in  its  evolution  only  because  of 
its  own  fancied  or  real  connection  therewith. 

Certain  writers  have  attempted  to  set  up  a  distinction 
between  change  and  progress  according  to  some  standard 
of  adaptation  or  adjustment.  Professor  Ross,  for  example, 
says:  "Progress  is  better  adaptation  to  given  conditions. 
Change  may  be  adaptation  —  at  first,  perhaps,  very  im- 
perfect —  to  new  conditions."  Carver  also  declares  that 
the  "whole  evolutionary  process,  both  passive  and  active, 
both  biological  and  economic,  is  a  development  away  from 
less  toward  greater  adaptation,  frorn  less  toward  greater 
harmony  between  the  species  and  its  environment."  ^  But 
is  this  distinction  accurate  or  illuminating?  What  condi- 
tions are  given?  Is  the  world  static?  Or  do  we  not  in 
some  measure  create  our  conditions,  our  world,  as  we  go  ? 
Is  not  even  the  very  prerequisite  to  change  a  certain  mal- 
adjustment to  given  conditions?  Discontent,  dissatis- 
faction, chafing,  and  tension  prepare  the  load  and  are  the 
triggers  which  discharge  it  in  the  process  called  progress. 
It  is  incorrect,  then,  to  measure  progress  by  mere  adapta- 
tion. For  perfect  adaptation  is  death,  the  negation  of  all 
progress.  Progress  means  struggle  to  adjust  rather  than 
adjustment,  struggle  against  both  natural  and  social  en- 
vironments. Man's  struggle  is  perhaps  not  so  much  against 
nature  directly  as  it  is  indirectly  through  a  selective  struggle 

^  Ross,  Foundations  oj  Sociology,  185 ;  Carver,  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  41. 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  97 

between  ideas,  desires,  standards,  or  tendencies  in  himself. 
For,  in  a  sense,  he  and  nature  are  one ;  he  and  his  environ- 
ment are  identical,  and  this  in  no  fantastic  sense. .  Some- 
times rebellion,  heresy,  and  selection  counter  to  the  given 
environment  must  set  in.  On  this  score  we  may  say  that 
man's  progress  has  been  won  at  the  expense  of  nature's 
laws.  If  this  be  adaptation,  it  is  always  an  attempt  to 
adapt  to  something  which  is  not  yet.  In  justice  to  Carver 
and  to  Bristol,  who  follows  him  closely,  we  believe  that 
this  is  their  real  meaning.  For  they  distinguish  between 
passive  or  non-purposive  adaptation  (including  physical 
evolution  and  some  phases  of  language,  mores,  laws,  insti- 
tutions and  social  control),  and  active  adaptation,  the  pur- 
posive modification  of  man  or  social  group  to  suit  it  to  its 
environment,  or  of  the  environment  to  make  it  suit  the 
organism.^  Much  ambiguity  could  be  averted  by  substi- 
tuting the  term,  "control,"  or  "utilization,"  for  active 
adaptation,  since  the  idea  is  admittedly  adaptation  oj  cir- 
cumstances to  human  needs. 

Perhaps,  next,  we  should  point  out  a  distinction  between 
social  evolution  conceived  as  achievement,  and  progress  as 
the  appropriation  of  achievement.  Professor  Ward  phrases 
the  conflict  of  terms  as  that  between  'achievement'  and 
'improvement.'  -  He  would  make  the  real  test  an  increase 
in  happiness.  It  is  easily  demonstrable  that,  for  example, 
economic  evolution  is  not  synonymous  with  enlarged  sense 
of  happiness.  A  full  manger  may  mean  only  an  occasional 
fat  ox,  not  a  better  breed  of  cattle.  The  transition  from 
the  old  household  or  consumption  economy  through  the 
industrial  revolution  to  our  modern  factory  economy  is  a 
case  in  point ;  for  the  old  household  producer  felt  no  less 
happy,  probably,  than  the  modern  factory  employee.     In- 

^  Carver,  op.  cit.,  158;  Bristol,  Social  Adaptation,  8,  etc. 
^Applied  Sociology,  21-2. 

H 


98  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

deed,  a  reading  of  the  modern  literature  of  socialism  and 
other  movements  of  protest  might  easily  leave  the  impres- 
sion that  the  modern  workman  is  less  happy  than  his  for- 
bears. Perhaps  he  ought  not  to  expect  to  be.  Perhaps 
the  industrial  changes  have  not  wrought  in  him  the  moral 
improvement  necessary  to  increased  happiness.  Indeed, 
John  Stuart  Mill  held  that  there  might  be  progress  without 
corresponding  improvement,  though,  to  be  sure,  he  adds 
his  belief  that  "the  general  tendency  is,  and  will  continue 
to  be,  one  of  improvement ;  a  tendency  toward  a  better 
and  happier  state."  ^ 

Are  we  justified  in  going  so  far  as  to  say  that  progress 
does  not  mean  the  full  attainment  of  happiness  but  only 
movement  towards  attainment?  A  recent  young  radical 
wrote  :  "...  society  does  not  strive  towards  fulfillment,  but 
only  towards  striving.  It  seeks  not  a  goal,  but  a  higher 
starting  point  from  which  to  seek  a  goal.  .  .  .  Our  present 
ideal  of  a  socialized  democratic  civilization  is  dynamic. 
It  is  not  an  idyllic  state  in  which  all  men  are  good  and 
wise  and  insufferably  contented.  ...  It  is  not  a  state 
at  all,  but  a  mere  direction. "^  Highly  admirable  as  this 
athletic  ideal  may  be,  it  must  not  be  taken  so  literally  as  to 
exclude  a  certain  element  of  satisfaction  and  a  certain  storing 
up  of  the  fruits  of  achievement.  It  simply  means  that 
complacency  is  death.  Hence  the  apotheosis  of  activity. 
It  is  just  this  insistence  on  concrete  achievement  which  the 
American  mind  demands  as  the  price  of  its  activity,  that 
makes  it  difficult,  as  Professor  Dewey  points  out,  for 
Americans  to  understand  the  German  cult  of  the  will. 
Ceaseless  willing  and  striving  just  for  the  sake  of  willing 
and  striving  beget  conceit,  historical  myopia,  and  mysti- 
cism;   or  in  a  word,   romantic  nullity.     Even   Germans 

*  Logic,  8th  ed.,  N.  Y.,  igoo,  p.  632. 

^  Walter  Weyl,  The  New  Democracy,  354-5. 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  99 

themselves,  says  Professor  Dewey,  recognize  that  their 
"idea  of  universal  striving  as  an  end  in  itself  is  a  child  of 
Romanticism."  ^  But  Romanticism  is  reversion,  not  prog- 
ress ;  it  is  eating  up  one's  capital,  not  creating  new  values. 

Social  progress  must  further  be  distinguished  from  racial 
progress.  Man  as  a  member  of  a  race  is  a  mere  zoological 
specimen.  Man  as  part  of  a  family,  a  state,  a  nation, 
belongs  to  culture-history,  to  the  history  of  the  human  mind, 
to  the  history  of  real  values.  It  is  not  the  natural  but  the 
social  history  of  mankind  that  is  really  significant.  We 
assume,  of  course,  a  certain  maximum  racial  development 
as  the  minimal  basis  upon  which  to  plant  cultural  or  social 
progress.  For  purposes  of  a  discussion  of  social  progress 
the  biological  or  race  element  may  be  almost  wholly  ab- 
stracted. While  the  race  has  been  relatively  stagnant, 
society  has  rapidly  developed,  for  social  changes  are  mainly 
determined,  not  by  alterations  of  racial  type,  but  by 
modifications  of  tradition.^  As  we  shall  see  later  in  dis- 
cussing the  selectionist  interpretation  of  social  progress, 
fundamental  human  types  were  pretty  well  fixed  through 
natural  selection  ages  ago.  And  social  selection  has  tended 
to  make  up  for  any  deficiencies  of  strength  or  other  bodily 
quahties  in  man  where  natural  selection  left  him.  As 
Darwin  pointed  out,  the  small  strength  and  speed  of  man, 
his  want  of  natural  weapons,  etc.,  are  more  than  counter- 
balanced by  his  intellectual  and  social  qualities.^ 

But  the  biologist  may  persist  in  a  desire  to  know  how  we 
can  be  sure  that  we  are  maintaining  the  certain  maximum 
racial  development  which  we  assume  as  the  starting  point 
for  cultural  or  social  progress.  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester  raised 
the  question  nearly  thirty  years  ago,  and  it  is  still  per- 

'  Atlantic  Monthly,  February,  1916,  p.  260. 

^  Hobhouse,  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory,  39. 

^  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  2d  ed.,  63-4. 


lOO  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

tinent.  "Possibly  we  are  all  drifting,"  said  he,  "tending 
to  the  condition  of  intellectual  Barnacles  or  Ascidians." 
But  in  spite  of  a  good  deal  of  alarmist  newspaper  and 
pseudo-scientific  talk  (not  excluding  much  Eugenics  dis- 
cussion), there  seems  to  be  not  the  slightest  proof  of  any- 
thing approaching  a  general  and  constant  tendency  for 
the  human  race  to  degenerate,  physically  or  mentally. 
The  general  level  of  race  fitness  won  by  natural  selection 
has  been  on  the  whole  maintained.  And  the  reason  is  to 
be  found  in  man's  growing  intelhgence  and  mastery  over  his 
world :  these  give  him  more  than  mere  nominal  control 
over  his  own  course  of  development ;  they  have  enabled 
him  to  retain  physical  efficiency  with  one  hand,  and  with 
the  other  to  carve  out  the  great  lines  of  his  achievements 
in  civiHzation.^ 

Is  progress  necessary  ?  Change  is  necessary ;  indeed  it 
appears  to  be  the  fundamental  characteristic  of  all  phe- 
nomena in  our  universe.  Though  Lucretius  has  been 
quoted  as  stating  an  inevitable  law  of  progress,  I  doubt  if 
he  meant  more  than  perpetual  change  in  the  Heraclitan 
sense.  Pascal  conceived  the  whole  succession  of  men  as  a 
single  man,  living  forever  and  continually  learning.  Certain 
of  the  older  pohtical  thinkers,  among  them  Burke,  not  yet 
quite  disengaged  from  theological  preconceptions,  posited 
a  universal  law  of  Progress,  impelled  by  some  Mover  or 
Purposive  Plan.^     Comte  quoted  with  apparent  approval 

^  In  this  connection  should  be  read  the  concluding  paragraphs  of  Lankes- 
ter's  famous  essay  Degeneration :  A  Chapter  in  Darwinism.  His  plea  was 
for  full  and  earnest  cultivation  of  Science  as  a  protection  from  race  relapse 
and  degeneration.  His  plea  is  valid  provided  it  includes  social  as  well  as 
physical  science.  For  a  good  statement  of  the  degeneration  theory  we  rec- 
ommend St.  Paul's  Epistles  or  Rousseau's  Discours  sitr  rinegalile:  the 
latter  contains  the  familiar  thesis  that  individual  progress  carries  with  it 
decrepitude  of  the  species. 

2  Burke  in  his  Reflections  speaks  of  a  world  order  "wherein,  by  the  dis- 
position of  a  stupendous  wisdom,  moulding  together  the  great  mysterious 
incorporation  of  the  human  race,  the  whole,  at  one  time,  is  never  old,  or 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  lOI 

Pascal's  "immortal  aphorism";  and  even  while  ostensibly 
pitching  metaphysics  out  of  the  window  and  rejecting  what 
he  called  the  chimera  of  indefinite  perfectibihty,  neverthe- 
less let  metaphysics  in  again  by  the  door ;  for  despite  his 
positivism  he  assumed  a  tendency  to  development  in  man. 
Spencer  and  other  evolutionary  philosophers  laid  down  the 
law  of  progress  in  terms  of  development  or  change.  To 
Spencer  social  progress  was  only  one  example  of  the  uni- 
versal, inherent  tendency  of  the  cosmos  to  develop  from  the 
homogeneous  to  the  heterogeneous.  The  new  vitalistic 
philosophy  of  Bergson,  Eucken,  and  their  disciples  intro- 
duces once  more  the  notion  of  an  extra-human  'vital 
impulse,'  vis  a  tergo,  or  moving  force  which  propels 
humanity  onward  —  just  whither  no  one  knows,  but 
at  least  onward. 

Even  sociologists  with  a  certain  philosophical  bent  have 
fallen  into  the  same  comfortable  but  unscientific  habit  of 
attributing  social  phenomena,  including  social  evolution, 
to  the  play  of  so-called  'social  forces.'  Is  there  a  'force' 
in  social  evolution  corresponding  to  gravity,  which  makes 
the  stream  of  history  really  stream  instead  of  stagnate  or 
collect  in  puddles  and  lakes  ?  What  makes  the  stream  go  ? 
The  springs  at  its  source  ?  The  rivulets  that  flow  into  it  ? 
No,  they  simply  mean  the  making  of  pools,  ponds,  lakes. 
Gravity  makes  it  really  a  stream.  What  is  social  gravity? 
Is  it  Bergson's  elan  vital?  Is  it  some  Primal  Force? 
Sociology  cannot  tell.  It  observes  an  apparent  fundamental 
impulse  of  men  and  all  things  else  to  change  and  develop. 
But  it  cannot  rest  content  with  this  observation  if  it  expects 
to  explain  anything  of  human  phenomena.  Medieval 
speculation    ascribed    the    earth's    diurnal    revolution    to 

middle-aged,  or  young,  but,  in  a  condition  of  unchangeable  constancy, 
moves  on  through  the  varied  tenor  of  perpetual  decay,  fall,  renovation,  and 
progression.  .  .  ." 

JMfBKSITY  OF  r  .MP0H*i^4 
^^    SAMXA  BARBARA 


I02  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

damned  souls  trying  to  climb  up  the  inner  crust  of  the  earth 
out  of  hell-fire.  They  were  the  '  force '  in  question.  To  say 
that  the  earth  moves  or  that  society  moves  because  of  some 
force  that  moves  it  is  no  less  medieval.  That  is  only  stat- 
ing the  problem  anew  in  the  guise  of  an  explanation.  To 
say  with  Turgot,  or  Condorcet,  or  Pelletan,  or  Wergeland 
that  because  nature's  laws  are  constant  humanity  marches 
inevitably,  irresistibly  towards  perfection  would  demand 
of  us  more  evidence  and  more  exact  inductions  than  we 
can  yet  command ;  moreover,  would  require  a  convincing 
definition  of  what  we- mean  by  'perfection.'  Undoubtedly 
we  should  like  to  beheve  Tolstoi  when  he  declares  that 
"progress  is  an  inevitable  growth  and  that  the  aim  is 
simply  the  welfare  of  all  men,"  and  that  if  we  all  knew 
and  accepted  this  fact  everything  would  fall  into  its  proper 
place ;  but  something  more  than  mere  assertion  must  be 
offered  as  the  basis  of  such  a  conviction.  Can  we  say  with 
Bachofen  that  progress  is  due  in  the  last  analysis  to  an  in- 
born instinct  for  improvement  or  to  a  bias  for  perfection? 
Or  with  Federici,  that  progress  is  the  natural  order,  the 
only  thinkable  condition,  the  universal  rule ;  that  progress 
and  being  are  equivalent  terms ;  or  that  civilization  owes  its 
development  to  the  'irresistible  impulse  of  innate  forces'? 
Or  with  Carmichael,  that  man's  inventions  and  achieve- 
ments are  not  direct  causes  of  progress,  and  because  they 
merely  released  man's  inherent  capacity  and  activity  there 
must  have  been  a  power  of  development  inherent  in  human 
nature  already?  Or  with  Chernishevsky,  that  to  deny 
progress  is  just  as  absurd  as  to  deny  the  forces  of  gravity 
or  chemical  affinity  ?  ^ 

To  do  so  would  be  to  lie  tamely  down  and  beg  the  ques- 

'  Bachofen,  Antiqiiarische  Bricfc,  ii,  237-8;  Federici,  Lois  du  progres,  i, 
xix,  209  ;  ii,  32,  etc. ;  Carmichael,  "Prospect  of  Human  Progress,"  Science, 
39  :  883-90 ;  Chernishevsky,  Works,  v,  491,  summarized  in  Hecker,  Russian 
Sociology,  80. 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  103 

tion.  This  sociology  must  strenuously  refuse  to  do.  I 
admit  that  our  hearts  burn  within  us  when  the  historian 
descants  upon  "the  vital  principle  of  betterment."  How 
can  one  resist  such  a  song  as  this?  "At  last,  perhaps,  the 
long  disputed  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  has  been  found ; 
it  may  be  the  refusal  to  cooperate  with  the  vital  principle 
of  betterment.  History  would  seem,  in  short,  to  condemn 
the  principle  of  conservatism  as  a  hopeless  and  wicked 
anachronism."  ^  Yet  the  sociologist  must  lash  himself  to 
the  mast  and  make  a  brave  show  of  sailing  past  the  siren 
in  the  effort  to  prove  objectively  the  historian's  intuition. 
Sociology  must  not  even  accept  certain  primary  impulses 
(the  impulse  to  self-maintenance,  self-perpetuation,  self- 
gratification,  altruism,  good- will),  or  certain  groups  of 
'feehngs'  or  'interests'  as  final  causes  or  undecomposable 
forces ;  at  least  not  before  a  persistent  attempt  to  reduce 
them  to  lower  terms.  Hence,  it  is  altogether  possible  that 
there  is  a  force  for  progress,  but  that  if  we  look  closely 
enough  we  shall  discover  certain  busy,  thinking,  feehng 
individuals  grouped  into  an  organic  association,  and  that 
they,  their  association,  and  their  doings,  are  the  real  social 
forces.^  And  it  is  from  their  nature  that  we  must  deter- 
mine, if  it  be  possible  or  profitable,  whether  there  is  any 
surety  of  or  any  limit  to  human  progress. 

So  far  there  is  not  the  slightest  evidence  to  warrant  the 
behef  in  continuous,  automatic,  inevitable  progress;  still 
less  the  behef  that  it  is  a  blessing  conferred  by  some  mys- 
terious Power  from  without.  Progress  is  rare,  evolution 
and  change  universal.  Just  as  the  dead  far  outnumber 
the  Hving  so  the  abortive  civilizations  exceed  the  success- 
ful.    The  past  counts  far  more  savages  and  barbarians 

^  J.  H.  Robinson,  The  New  History,  265. 

2  Prof.  E.  C.  Hayes,  in  an  article  in  the  Amer.  Jour,  of  Sociol.  16  :  613-25, 
has  given  what  ought  to  prove  the  definitive  refutation  of  this  *  Social  Forces' 
fallacy. 


I04  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

than  truly  civilized.  Balfour  says,  and  rightly,  progres- 
sive civilization  "is  no  form  of  indestructible  energy  which, 
if  repressed  here  must  needs  break  out  there,  if  refused 
embodiment  in  one  shape  must  needs  show  itself  in 
another.  It  is  a  plant  of  tender  habit,  difficult  to 
propagate,  not  difficult  to  destroy,  that  refuses  to 
flourish  except  in  a  soil  which  is  not  to  be  found  every- 
where, nor  at  all  times,  nor  even,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
necessarily  to  be  found  at  all."  ^ 

Too  often  behef  in  progress  is  sentimentalism  rather  than 
science ;  or  it  is  pious  dogma  whose  purpose,  like  that  of 
religious  dogma,  may  be  to  serve  as  an  anodyne  to  real 
thinking.  Or  again  it  appears  as  a  baleful  kind  of  com- 
placent egotism  which  mistakes  certain  gains  in  the  means 
to  physical  comfort  and  ease  for  signs  that  cosmic  forces 
are  working  irresistibly  to  improve  the  whole  state  of  human 
affairs.  Mr.  P.  E.  More  accuses  some  evolutionists  of  this 
perfectionism,  a  romantic  belief  in  some  ameliorative  drift ; 
for  it  is  just  that  and  nothing  more,  he  declares,  "a  faith  in 
drifting ;  a  behef  that  things  of  themselves,  by  a  kind  of 
natural  gravity  of  goodness  in  them,  move  always  on  and 
on  in  the  right  direction  ;  a  confiding  trust  in  human  nature 
as  needing  no  restraint  and  compression,  but  rather  full 
hberty  to  follow  its  own  impulsive  desires  to  expand.  .  .  ."  ^ 
He  is  quite  justified  in  denying  to  such  soft  thinking  the 
name  science  or  even  proper  philosophy  of  progress.  Race 
egotism,  the  ethnocentric  beUef  that  we  are  the  Chosen 
People,  the  Sword  of  God,  the  Divine  Scourge,  and  that 
we  must  hack  our  way  through  to  demonstrate  this  Destiny, 
is  bad  enough ;  but  even  more  fatal  the  comfortable  behef 
that  we  can  drift  along  on  the  river  of  events  and  wake  up 

^  A.  J.  Balfour,  "A  Fragment  on  Progress,"  Essays  and  Addresses,  2d  ed., 
pp.  243-4. 

^  Aristocracy  and  Justice,  preface,  pp.  viii-ix. 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  105 

each  morning  to  find  ourselves  still  nearer  the  great  ocean 
of  God's  Providence.  Such  beliefs  are  worse  than  fatuous  : 
they  are  paralyzing  fatalism.  Says  John  Morley :  "To 
think  of  progress  as  a  certainty  is  superstitious  —  the  most 
splendid  and  animated  of  all  superstitions,  if  you  like,  yet 
a  superstition  still.  It  is  a  kind  of  fatahsm  —  radiant, 
confident,  and  infinitely  hopeful,  yet  fatahsm  still,  and  hke 
fatahsm  in  all  its  other  forms,  inevitably  dangerous  to  the 
effective  sense  of  individual  responsibihty."  ^  Science, 
philosophy,  history  and  common  sense  unite  in  testifying 
that  progress  is  not  a  free  gift  of  the  gods  but  something 
to  be  earned  by  clear  vision  and  hard  work ;  that  is,  a 
human  contingency  based  upon  human  effort,  foresight,  and 
constructive  utilization  of  human  powers.^ 

We  are  forced  back,  then,  upon  the  search  for  real  causa- 
tive factors ;  and  it  is  to  be  expected  a  priori  that  this 
search  will  bring  to  light  many  complexities  and  inequali- 
ties in  the  evolutionary  process.  We  actually  find  that 
progress  is  never  unihnear  but  zigzag ;  not  along  one 
straight  road  as  the  crow  flies,  but  by  a  network  of  criss- 
crossing paths.^  It  may  show  little  perpendicular  rise 
but  much  lateral  spreading  out  of  the  gains  of  advance. 
Certain  elements  in  a  given  society  or  given  historical 
period  will  move  faster  than  others.  There  is  never  any 
absolute  unity  to  the  social  mind  (using  that  term  to  mean 
only  certain  well-marked  sentiments  and  ideas  which  are 

*  "Some  Thoughts  on  Progress,"  Ednc.  Rev.,  29  :  7-8. 

'^  Ci.  Dewey,  Internl.  Jour.  Ethics,  Apr.  1916,  311-22;  Sergi,  "Qualche 
idee  sul  progresso  umano,"  Rivistaitaliana  di  sociologia,  17  :  No.  i  ;  Shana- 
han,  "Evolution  and  Progress,"  Catholic  World,  101:145-156.  See  also 
Groos'  study  of  Julius  Schultz'  "  Maschinen-theorie  des  Lebens"  in  the 
Internationale  Wochenschrift,  Aug.  27,  1910 :  Schultz  calls  the  idea  of  pro- 
gressive amelioration  of  the  world  "das  widerliche  Pobelschwatz  vom  unend- 
lichen  Fortschritt." 

^  Cf.  Tarde,  Transformations  du  droit,  p.  iii,  and  Lois  de  limitation,  2d  ed., 
55-63 ;   Gettell,  Problems  in  Political  Evolution,  preface,  p.  iv. 


Io6  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

common  property),  there  is  never  such  a  social  consensus, 
such  an  intimate  sohdarity  between  the  diverse  activities 
within  a  social  group  that  the  progressive  movement  of  all 
is  in  the  same  direction  or  at  an  equal  rate.  It  may  well 
be,  as  Sorel  holds,  that  economic  progress  is  continuous, 
while  in  the  moral  and  intellectual  worlds  the  forward 
movement  is  discontinuous.  A  group  may  attain  prodi- 
gious economic  development  with  an  inconsiderable  moral 
or.  aesthetic  progress ;  or  a  leisured  aristocracy  may  win 
culture  by  leaps  and  bounds,  leaving  unnoticed  the  toiling 
mass  of  an  ilhterate  proletariat  or  slave  class.  Or,  as  in 
the  case  of  India,  a  marvelous  capacity  for  rehgious  philoso- 
phy may  accompany  puerility  in  government  and  economic 
stagnation.  Neither  can  we  assume  too  lightly  that,  say, 
scientific  progress  is  tantamount  to  social  progress.  For 
the  same  science  that  Hghtens  toil,  releases  leisure,  accumu- 
lates masses  of  capital  and  spendable  wealth,  may,  and 
frequently  does,  bring  with  it  social  decadence  and  disin- 
tegration instead  of  progress.  M.  Nobel  must  have  recog- 
nized this  sardonic  consequence.  For  with  one  hand  he 
gives  the  world  dynamite,  and  with  the  other  a  Peace 
Prize  to  offset  the  international  tendency  to  utilize  his 
discovery  in  more  effective  warfare.  The  same  agency 
that  tunnels  mountains  and  digs  canals  is  used  by  revolu- 
tionary labor  leaders  to  blow  up  bridges  and  wreck  news- 
paper offices.  Hence  the  progress  of  any  social  institution 
or  mode  of  activity  is  not  an  absolute  good,  is  not  absolute 
social  progress,  but  is  only  relatively  good  or  bad,  consider- 
ing the  whole  movement  of  society.  Thus  a  more  complex 
and  highly  evolved  government  —  say,  representative  re- 
publicanism —  may  not  bring  ipso  facto  greater  social  well 
being. 

It   is   just   these   discrepancies    that    have    led    to    the 
phrases  "the  costs  of  progress"   and  the  "pathology  of 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  1 07 

progress."  ^  For  the  law  of  compensation  as  formulated  by 
Emerson  seems  to  hold  to  a  certain  degree.  Or,  stated  in 
sociological  jargon,  it  is  at  least  arguable  that  there  is  a  cer- 
tain necessary  solidarity,  a  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  be- 
tween certain  phenomena  of  progress  and  those  of  decadence. 
One  is  not  surprised  to  find  some  wastes  through  friction  and 
experimentation  in  so  complex  a  mechanism  as  the  social 
organization.  They  abound  in  both  government  and 
private  business.  Adaptation  or  control  is  never  a  free 
gift  of  nature ;  it  is  always  an  achievement,  a  conquest, 
born  of  much  toil  and  expenditure  of  energy.  Yet  in  dis- 
cussing these  wastes,  or  costs  of  progress,  we  must  be  sure 
that  we  mean  real  progress,  progress  that  can  be  measured 
in  terms  of  some  tangible,  general  human  good,  and  not 
merely  change  or  evolution  along  some  one  line  of  social 
activity.  Progress  could  only  mean  poverty,  for  example, 
in  a  condition  of  laissez  faire  industrial  development.  But 
progress  bought  with  a  poverty-eaten  population  could 
scarcely  with  propriety  be  called  progress  at  all.  In  esti- 
mating the  costs  of  progress,  I  repeat,  we  must  be  careful 
to  discriminate  between  real  progress,  whether  social  or 
industrial,  and  temporary  industrial  supremacy.  English 
Poor  Law  and  Factory  Commissions,  the  intensive  surveys 
of  Charles  Booth  and  B.  S.  Rowntree,  have  shown  that 
Britain's  industrial  supremacy  has  been  secured  and  up- 
held at  a  cost  of  millions  of  human  lives  and  of  the  physical 
and  spiritual  degradation  of  other  millions.  The  Com- 
mission which  reported  on  physical  deterioration  in  1904 
was  none  too  optimistic  as  to  the  physical  tendency  of 


^  See  the  chapter  (IV)  "The  Pathology  of  Progress"  in  Farnham's 
Economic  Utilization  of  History.  His  treatment  of  the  topic  is  somewhat 
superficial ;  the  main  points  being  that  so  far  as  economic  reforms  through 
legislation  have  no  assured  result,  prediction  is  uncertain,  and  disastrous  by- 
products come  from  well-meant  schemes. 


lo8  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

twentieth-century  Britain.^  Many  thoughtful  Enghshmen 
have  reported  during  recent  years  a  general  spirit  of  pessi- 
mism as  characterizing  their  countrymen.  These  allega- 
tions, if  proved,  might  be  set  down  as  evidence  that  either 
there  has  been  little  or  no  progress  in  England  during  the 
last  century  or  two,  or  that  it  has  not  been  worth  the 
candle. 

On  the  other  hand,  progress  along  one  line  does  not 
necessarily  mean  the  exclusion  of  progress  along  others,  in 
spite  of  the  general  principle  of  group  preoccupation.  In- 
deed the  contrary  is  almost  inevitable,  namely,  that  one 
social  influence  will  tend  to  reinforce  another  by  a  sort  of 
'summation  of  stimuH,'  and  that  advance  in  the  scientific, 
industrial,  or  political  fields  is  likely  to  contribute  to  advance 
in  other  fields  of  knowledge  and  activity. 

Is  there,  then,  a  law  of  progress?  This  is  merely  the 
question  of  the  'force  for  progress'  in  another  dress.  To 
speak  of  the  law  of  progress  is  completely  to  beg  the  ques- 
tion. Scientifically,  we  cannot  speak  of  a  law  here.  In- 
deed, we  must  admit  that  law  in  even  the  exact  sciences  is 
essentially  a  product  of  the  human  mind  and  has  no  mean- 
ing apart  from  man.  It  is  mere  generalized  human  experi- 
ence. Its  only  necessity  is  not  the  logical  must  of  a  geo- 
metrical theorem,  nor  the  categorical  must  of  a  human 
law-giver;  "it  is  merely  our  experience  of  a  routine  whose 
stages  have  neither  logical  nor  vohtional  order."  -  It  is 
simply  the  shorthand  expression  of  certain  associations, 
relationships,  and    sequences   between   certain   groups   of 

'  Lord  Brassey  and  Professor  Chapman,  however,  in  the  latest  part  of 
their  great  work  on  Work  and  Wages  (Part  III,  1914)  firmly  state  their  con- 
clusion that  modern  industrialism  has  not  degenerated  the  race ;  moreover, 
that  the  germ  plasm  of  the  unskilled  mechanic  is  as  valuable  as  that  of  the 
so-called  higher  classes  among  whom  restricted  birth  rate  is  so  notorious  as 
to  cause  alarm  to  certain  scientists. 

2  Karl  Pearson,  Grammar  of  Science,  3d  ed.,  i,  120-87,  82,  etc.  Cf.  J.  S. 
Mill,  Logic,  Bk.  V,  chap.  v. 


THE   CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  109 

human  experiences,  and  has  no  existence  outside  the  mind 
of  men. 

We  need  scarcely  look  for  a  more  precise  notion  of 
'social  law'  or  'social  causation.'  We  cannot,  for  example, 
say  with  strict  accuracy  that  the  discovery  of  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope  route  to  the  Indies  caused  the  decHne  of  Vene- 
tian supremacy,  or  that  the  Industrial  Revolution  has 
caused  the  twentieth-century  proletariat.  At  best  we  can 
only  say  those  phenomena  are  associated.  Cause  is  some- 
thing we  read  into  them.  Similarly  with  social  law.  All 
we  can  posit  is  that  these  associated  phenomena  tend  to 
recur,  and  that  with  probability  of  recurrence  there  is  also 
probabihty  of  exceptions.  Hence,  when  one  attempts  to 
work  out  a  '  law  of  social  evolution '  he  will  have  to  con- 
tent himself  with  less  of  strict  mathematical  generaliza- 
tion and  with  more  of  descriptive  synthesis.  At  the  same 
time  he  will  recognize  that  human  phenomena  are  analyz- 
able  and  subject  to  causation  of  some  sort.  It  may  well 
be  that  cause  as  conceived  by  the  chemist  or  physicist 
may  not  apply,  but  cause  in  the  sense  of  stimulus  or  motive 
is  perfectly  conceivable  and  perfectly  valid.  The  motive  of 
fear  or  revenge,  for  instance,  is  no  less  causal  than  the  most 
tangible  and  measurable  mechanical  cause.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  the  descriptive  synthesis  of  social  movements 
is  so  complex  as  almost  to  defy  unraveling. 

Humanity  moves  at  no  uniform  rate,  we  say.  Not 
because  some  underlying  'force'  fails  to  apply  itself  with 
regularity,  but  because  the  interactions  of  men  with  men 
and  with  their  environments  vary  in  quality  and  quantity. 
Human  evolution  is  like  an  adventure  story.  Some  chap- 
ters move  fast  (the  fight  with  the  pirates  in  Treasure  Island, 
or  the  appearance  of  Man  Friday  in  Robinson  Crusoe) ; 
others  in  which  the  author  is  preparing  the  way  for  a 
'thriller'  seem  to  drag.     In  a  sense  humanity  is  like  the 


no  THEORIES   OF   SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

proverbial  small  boy.  It  is  continually  getting  into 
*  scrapes '  and  then  getting  out,  only  to  land  in  new  ones ; 
for  instance,  overpopulation,  immigration,  ghost-worship, 
imperialism.  This  is  simply  to  say  that  human  hfe  and 
social  evolution  are  but  a  series  of  problems,  and  that  the 
solution  of  one  only  opens  the  way  to  a  new  one.  What- 
ever aids  in  getting  out  of  the  scrape  or  solving  the  problem 
determines  how  fast  we  proceed  to  the  next ;  in  other 
words,  determines  our  rate  of  progress.  This  is  why  some 
historical  ages  appear  dull,  others  brilHant.  The  reign  of 
Henry  VII  was.  extremely  drab  and  slow;  but  it  was  a 
period  of  incubation,  a  season  of  trying  out  such  new  inven- 
tions as  paper  and  printing,^  which  helped  to  prepare  the 
way  for  the  Reformation  and  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  Like- 
wise eighteenth-century  England  was  tedious,  but  again  a 
time  of  elaboration  out  of  which  came  the  material  equip- 
ment for  the  Industrial  Revolution.  One  is  strongly  in- 
clined to  compare  the  movement  of  nations  and  smaller 
social  groups  with  the  "curves  of  learning  "  in  an  individual's 
education.  The  curve  rises  to  giddy  heights,  then  drops 
abysmally,  then  runs  along  a  plateau,  rises  again,  drops, 
and  again  flatland. 

While  it  is  true  that  there  may  be  no  law  of  progress  in 
the  strictest  sense  of  the  word  'law,'  it  may  be  quite  within 
the  range  of  possibility  to  lay  down  certain  broad  condi- 
tions which,  if  they  are  met,  might  prove  favorable  to  social 
advance.  In  general,  these  conditions  would  reduce  to 
terms  of  surplus  energy.  In  particular,  vigor,  health,  and 
leisure  are  the  prime  requisites.  Moreover,  by  reason  of 
the  limited  sum  of  time  and  energy  at  our  disposal,  and 
because  the  human  mind  is  prone  to  wander  and  hard  to 
concentrate,  vigorous  minds  not  distracted  by  too  meticu- 

*  Cf .  W.  Stubbs,  Seventeen  Lectures  on  the  Study  of  Mediceval  and  Modern 
History,  Oxford,  1886,  Lecture  XV,  "The  Reign  of  Henry  VII." 


THE  CONCEPT  OF  PROGRESS  ill 

lous  devotion  to  lichen-grown  conventions  are  indispensable. 
A  man  with  his  face  turned  back  or  sidewise  must  walk 
slowly  and  gingerly  forward  if  he  walks  at  all.  Finally, 
those  minds  must  not  be  depleted  by  fixation  upon  non- 
progressive activities,  the  routine  of  self-maintenance,  the 
corrupting  chase  after  luxury,  mere  animal  sports,  or  sex, 
or  growing  a  belly. ^  Progress  can  come  only  when  social 
change  is  comparatively  easy :  that  is,  when  less  energy  is 
wasted  in  overcoming  inertia  and  social  friction. 

These  conditions  bear  upon  the  rate  of  movement. 
Progress,  if  it  comes  at  all,  is  usually  gradual,  even  pain- 
fully slow,  not  cataclysmic.  Sudden  spirts  like  biologic 
mutations  may  occur,  but  they  rarely  or  never  take  on  the 
aspect  of  revolution.  Humanity  moves  oh  by  the  accu- 
mulation of  small  impulses  and  causes,  the  step-by-step 
elimination  of  hindrances,  not  by  explosions.  It  would 
seem,  however,  that  once  the  conditions  have  been  met, 

*  It  would  be  extremely  illuminating  and  probably  self-chastening  if  we 
could  get  a  reliable  statement  from  every  adult  American,  men  and  women,  as 
to  how  they  spend  their  time.  By  using  a  time  schedule,  such  as  Giddings 
suggests  {Am.  Jour.  Social.  i8:  629),  covering  truthfully  and  accurately 
every  minute  of  time  for  a  month  or  a  year,  and  by  analyzing  the  grand 
totals  we  could  get  by  inference  if  not  directly  some  idea  of  how  much  energy 
the  average  citizen  has  for  definite  conscious  social  advance.  The  Independ- 
ent (April  17,  1913)  asked  if  anyone  would  take  serious  exception  to  the 
following  as  a  truthful  list  of  the  great  "interests"  which  make  up  our 
American  life:  i,  the  ticker;  2,  female  apparel;  3,  baseball  bulletins; 
4,  the  "movies;"  5,  bridge  whist;  6,  turkey  trotting;  7,  yellow  journal 
headlines  and  "funny"  pages;  8,  the  prize  fight.  It  further  asked  if  any- 
body would  dispute  that  100,000  Americans  are  genuinely  interested  and 
excited  by  these  eight  matters,  to  every  10,000  that  are  more  than  perfunc- 
torily interested  in  religion,  to  every  5000  really  interested  in  politics,  to 
every  1000  interested  in  schools  and  education,  to  every  100  interested  in 
reasonably  good  music,  to  every  solitary  individual  interested  in  literature 
or  science.  Perhaps  nobody  would  care  to  dispute  the  issue,  largely  because 
nobody  at  present  is  armed  with  facts.  The  study  of  household  budgets,  a 
series  of  time-schedules,  a  comparison  of  attendances,  cost,  and  time  con- 
sumed by  various  recreational  devices,  and  the  inclusion  of  such  items  as 
sex  and  ceremonial  would  give  us  a  proper  arsenal  of  facts  from  which  to 
deduce  the  social-progress  surplus  of  time,  energy,  and  money. 


112  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

and  a  certain  surplus  of  attention  and  energy  is  released, 
there  is  something  cumulative  in  the  process,  akin  to  the 
acceleration  noted  in  the  physical  'law  of  falling  bodies.'  ^ 
But  the  movement  is  never  completed ;  it  is  a  series  of 
approximations.  Finally,  it  is  not  inevitable  nor  in  the 
nature  of  things ;  it  is  contingent  upon  human  energy, 
human  intelligence,  human  discipline,  foresight,  and  will. 

^  Suggestions  of  this  occur  in  John  Fiske,  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy, 
ii,  292-3;  see  also  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  Part  IV.  This  principle  of 
acceleration  holds  good  at  least  for  progress  in  the  arts  of  life :  Morgan 
phrases  it  as  slow  in  time  but  geometric  in  ratio.  On  his  scale  of  ethnic 
periods,  Savagery  and  Lower  Barbarism  cover  four  .fifths  of  man's  entire 
life  on  this  planet.  Domestication  of  animals  and  the  discovery  of  new 
sources  of  power  gave  a  tremendous  push  forward.  The  galloping  industrial 
development  of  the  nineteenth  century  even  more  strikingly  illustrates  this 
cumulative  process. 


CHAPTER   VII 
THE   CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS 


A  GENERATION  OF  two  ago  if  you  had  asked  Western 
historians  or  philosophers,  What  is  the  test  of  progress  ? 
they  would  probably  have  replied,  'increasing  civihzation,' 
and  smiled  complacently.  But  they  would  have  left  the 
question  still  unanswered.  For  what  is  civilization? 
Guizot,  the  historian  of  civilization,  said:  "Wherever  the 
exterior  of  man  becomes  enlarged,  quickened  or  improved, 
wherever  the  intellectual  nature  of  man  distinguishes  itself 
by  its  energy,  brilliancy,  and  its  grandeur ;  wherever  these 
two  signs  concur,  and  they  often  do  so,  notwithstanding 
the  gravest  imperfections  in  the  social  system,  there  man 
proclaims  and  applauds  civilization."  A  more  modern 
Latin  expresses  the  idea  more  precisely  and  less  rhetorically : 
"Civilization  is  human  progress  integrated  and  intensified. 
Its  most  essential  and  characteristic  manifestations  are 
diffusion  of  culture,  a  high  moral  and  intellectual  level, 
and  respect  for  law.  Hence  civilization  is  above  all  the 
result  of  the  domination  of  man  by  himself,  it  is  a  work  of 
interior  culture  in  which  three  civilizing  forces  par  excel- 
lence cooperate;  religion,  art,  science."^  Lester  F.  Ward 
defined  it  as  "the  artificial  adjustment  of  natural  objects 
in  such  a  manner  that  the  natural  forces  will  thereby  pro- 

^  Dellepiane,  Rev.  International  dc  Sociologie,  Jan.  1912,  p.  19. 
1  113 


114  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

duce  results  advantageous  to  man."  Carver  introduces 
the  idea  of  productivity:  "Now  civilization  is  essentially 
a  storing  of  surplus  energy,  and  is  due  to  the  fact  that  men 
have  had  more  energy  to  expend  than  was  necessary  to 
procure  subsistence."  William  T.  Harris  pronounced  a 
people  civilized  when  it  has  formed  for  itself  institutions 
which  give  men  command  of  the  earth  and  likewise  com- 
mand over  the  experiences  of  the  entire  race. 

The  Great  War  has  renewed  on  all  sides  the  old  discus- 
sion of  what  civihzation  really  means.  Apparently  civili- 
zation is  culture  plus  something  else  if  we  may  judge  from 
the  following  definitions.  Ellwood  finds  civilization  to  be 
at  bottom  "the  creation  and  transmission  of  ideal  values 
by  which  men  regulate  their  conduct  .  .  .  the  discovery, 
diffusion,  and  transmission  from  age  to  age  of  the  knowl- 
edge, beliefs,  ideas,  and  ideals  by  which  men  have  found  it 
possible  to  conquer  nature  and  live  together  in  well-ordered 
groups."  Tylor  in  his  classic  work  held  that  "Culture  or 
Civilization,  taken  in  its  widest  ethnographic  sense,  is  that 
complex  whole  which  includes  knowledge,  belief,  art,  morals, 
law,  custom,  and  any  other  capabilities  and  habits  acquired 
by  man  as  a  member  of  society."  ^ 

It  is  evident  that  '  civilization '  is  a  complex  term  involv- 
ing many  factors,  and  that  it  is  also  purely  relative,  since 
savages  have  a  measure  of  culture.  Hence  the  term  must 
be  broken  up  in  order  to  arrive  at  the  quantity,  quality, 
and  direction  of  culture  necessary  to  enter  the  class  of 
'progressive  civilizations.'  I  shall  begin  by  a  rapid  sum- 
mary of  test-formulae  proposed  by  divers  writers  widely 
separated  in  time,  country,  and  pursuits. 

^  Ward,  Dynamic  Sociology,  ii,  205 ;  Carver,  Sociology  and  Social  Prog- 
ress, 12 ;  Harris,  "A  Definition  of  Civilization,"  an  address  before  the  Car- 
lisle Indian  Industrial  School,  printed  in  the  Report  of  the  U.  S.  Commis- 
sioner of  Education,  1904;  Ellwood,  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  20:495;  Tylor, 
Primitive  Culture,  i,  p.  i. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  1 15 

Progress  in  civilization,  according  to  Condorcet,  is  moral 
and  intellectual;  accomplishes  three  objectives,  namely, 
destruction  of  inequality  between  nations,  progress  of 
equality  between  citizens  of  the  same  nation,  and  the  real 
perfection  of  man ;  by  means  of  new  discoveries  in  the 
sciences  and  arts,  and  their  application  to  individual  and 
communal  well-being,  or  by  improvement  in  the  principles 
of  conduct  and  practical  morality,  or  by  perfecting  man's 
intellectual,  moral,  and  physical  faculties.  Comte's  criteria 
of  progress  include :  the  development  of  order  (his  com- 
monest test,  particularly  in  the  Polity),  increasing  social 
differentiation  and  integration,  a  growing  preponderance 
of  reason  over  animality,  an  enlargement  of  man's  power 
over  the  forces  of  nature,  increasing  satisfaction  of  wants 
in  the  face  of  increasing  populations,  increasing  aptitude 
for  mental  combinations  and  abstract  thinking,  develop- 
ment of  the  social  faculties  and  their  expression  in  industrial 
cooperation  and  efforts  toward  social  amelioration.  Von 
Lilienfeld,  like  Tylor  and  De  Greef,  conceives  progress  as 
spiral  instead  of  rectilinear ;  and  applies  in  the  economic 
field  the  test  of  increase  in  property  with  growing  economic 
freedom ;  in  the  pohtical,  greater  individuality  of  action 
and  enlarged  freedom ;  in  the  legal,  more  exact  definition 
and  greater  assurance  of  the  rights  of  individual  and  com- 
munity. Progressive  civilization,  according  to  Bryce,  in- 
cludes physical  improvement,  material  comforts,  intelli- 
gence, improved  social  relations  (freedom,  security,  order), 
and  moral  improvement.  Professor  Patten  uses  both  objec- 
tive and  subjective  measures :  a  higher  social  structure  is 
marked  by  increased  activity,  surplus,  invention,  wealth, 
and  will  power ;  and  his  five  tests  for  progress  cover :  a 
desire  for  intenser  forms  of  happiness,  removal  of  fear, 
stability  of  social  institutions,  growth  of  voluntary  associa- 
tions, and  spread  of  the  spirit  of  toleration  and  decision  by 


Il6  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

compromise  instead  of  by  combat.  To  Marvin  knowledge, 
applied  power,  and  social  unity  and  organization  are  the 
striking  differences  which  the  historian  finds  between  civil- 
ized and  uncivilized  men.  Crozier  applies  the  single  test 
of  "elevation  and  expansion  of  the  individual  mind,"  or 
"greater  and  greater  respect  for  individual  expansion  and 
enlargement,"  working  in  two  directions,  "the  diffusion 
and  extension  of  equal  justice,  equal  rights,  equal  privileges, 
equal  opportunities,"  and  "the  ascension  of  men's  ideals 
from  brute  force  upwards  to  the  coronation  of  intellect  and 
virtue";  and  posits  as  the  fundamental  presupposition, 
the  real  test,  the  practical  equalization  of  material  and 
social  conditions.  Closely  alhed  with  this  view  is  Henry 
George's  categorical  statement  that  "association  in  equahty 
is  the  law  of  progress.  .  .  .  Modern  civilization  owes  its 
superiority  to  the  growth  of  equality  with  the  growth  of 
association."  So  also  a  group  of  Russian  thinkers.  To 
Kropotkin  progress  consists  in  social  solidarity  with  com- 
plete freedom  of  individual  initiative.  In  Lavrov's  hands 
the  formula  becomes  a  harmonizing  and  synthetizing  of 
the  social  forces  of  solidarity  and  individuality.  Kareyev 
expands  the  formula  to  include  "the  gradual  elevation  of 
the  standard  of  human  developrrient  accompanied  by  con- 
ditions which  make  it  possible  for  a  larger  and  larger  num- 
ber to  attain  this  standard,"  a  just  division  of  labor,  free 
interchange  of  thoughts,  feelings  and  tradition,  cooperation, 
opportunity  for  realizing  spiritual  interests  and  an  im- 
proved view  of  life,  freedom,  equality,  soHdarity,  and  im- 
provement in  social  institutions  and  the  arts  of  life.^ 

^  Condorcet,  Esquisse  d'un  tableau  historiqiie  des  progres  de  I'esprit  humain, 
ed.  1797,  pp.  250-1;  Comte,  Positive  Philosophy,  Martineau  2  vol.  ed.,  i, 
120,  361;  ii,  140,  150  ff.,  83-90,  128  ff.,  257,  288,  554,  etc.;  von  Lilienfeld, 
La  pathologic  sociale,  mtroAucXXon;  Bryce,  Atl.  Mo.,  \oo:  145-56;  Patten, 
"The  reconstruction  of  economic  theory,"  chap,  xv,  in  Ann.  Amer.  Acad.,  44 
(supplement)  :   83-8 ;    Marvin,  The  Living  Past,  4-5 ;    Crozier,  Civilization 


THE   CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS  1 17 

From  these  quotations,  order,  domination  over  self,  and 
the  conquest  of  the  material  world,  stand  out  as  touch- 
stones for  civilization.  More  concrete  tests,  however, 
have  been  demanded  and  proposed.  From  the  standpoint 
of  social  welfare,  for  example,  Professor  Ogg  summarizes 
the  last  125  years  of  European  history  as  a  period  of 
wonderful  progress,  with  abolitioiLJiL  priAn'lege,  estabhsh- 
ing  of  equality,  freeing  of  thought  and  expression,  scientific 
discovery  applieH~to  human  amelioration,  ,jLnd  a  multi- 
plicity  of  iorms  ot  msurance  as  its  chief  marks. ^  From  the 
standpoint  of  poHtical  theory  Professor  Hobhouse  finds 
notable  progress  in  the  extension  of  social  order,  solidarity, 
widening  of  the  social  unit,  impartial  justice,  rational  moral- 
ity, freedom,  mutual  forbearance  and  aid.-  To  M.  Delle- 
piane  is  due  credit  for  a  remarkable  attempt  to  work  out  an 
objective  analysis  in  extreme  detail.  It  may  be  impossible 
to  agree  with  him  as  to  the  existence  of  all  the  indices  of 
progress  he  cites  or  as  to  the  exact  significance  of  each  and 
all  of  them;  nevertheless  his  list  is  challenging.  It  in-'^ 
eludes  (to  select  only  a  few)  :  amelioration  and  generalizing 
of  material  well-being ;  spirit  of  enterprise ;  high  develop- 
ment of  social  and  industrial  machinery;  elevation  of 
coefficients  of  nuptiality  and  natality;  rarity  of  genesic 
aberrations ;  disappearance  and  disapproval  of  dueling 
and  bullying ;  preoccupation  with  public  affairs,  interest  in 
civic  life,  strict  performance  of  duties  as  citizens,  annulling 
of  influence  of  politicians,  absence  of  electoral  corruption, 
or  narrow  chauvinism  ;  disdain  for  plutocracy ;  prestige  of 

and  Progress,  3d  ed.,  135-140,  397-408;  George,  Progress  and  Poverty,  Bk. 
X,  chap,  iii;  Kropotkin,  Anarchist  Morality,  23;  Lavrov  and  Kareyev, 
quoted  in  Hecker,  Russian  Sociology,   117,   195-6. 

^  F.  A.  Ogg,  Social  Progress  in  Contemporary  Europe,  chap,  i ;  ex- Justice 
Hughes  has  practically  a  parallel  list  in  his  Conditions  of  Progress  in  a 
Democratic  Govcrmncni,  p.  6. 

^  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory,  152-3. 


Il8  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

intellectual  and  moral  elites;  respect  for  performance  of 
individual  duties;  sentiment  of  security  for  persons  and 
property;  respect  for  law  and  the  principle  of  authority, 
wide-spread  conviction  that  every  attack  on  the  rights  of 
another  is  an  attack  on  one's  own  rights ;  religious  toler- 
ance, respect  for  ecclesiastical  properties ;  elevation  of  the 
level  of  popular  education  and  reduction  of  the  number  of 
illiterates;  spread  of  scientific  curiosity  and  absence  of 
unhealthy  curiosity  ;  tendency  to  metaphysical  speculation 
and  ideahsm ;  love  of  noble  and  serious  art,  disdain  for  the 
frivolous  and  unhealthy,  diffusion  and  purifying  of  esthetic 
taste ;  purity  of  morals,  absence  of  pornography  in  streets, 
spectacles,  and  publications ;  family  solidarity,  cultivation 
of  domestic  virtues,  moderation  in  expenditures  for  luxuries, 
respect  for  parents  and  superiors ;  spirit  of  order  and  dis- 
cipline;  love  of  work;  general  observance  of  rules  of 
courtesy  and  civihty,  hospitality  for  strangers;  aversion 
for  bloody  spectacles  (e.^.,  bull  fights,  cock  fights,  pugilism) ; 
diminution  of  the  coefficient  of  mortahty,  rise  in  the  aver- 
age duration  of  hfe ;  immigration ;  decrease  of  pauperism, 
begging,  vagabondage,  prostitution,  alcohohsm,  morphin- 
ism, tobacconism,  criminaHty,  insanity,  suicide,  gambling, 
illegitimacy,  infant-abandonment,  abortions,  Malthusian 
practices ;  education  of  the  social  conscience  ;  tranquiUity 
and  general  optimism ;  faith  in  progress  and  confidence  in 
the  future.^ 

By  grouping  these  several  concrete  tests  we  reach  a 
number  of  well  marked  indices  of  progress,  industrial, 
educational,  humanitarian,  institutional.  Or,  expressing 
these  ideas  in  somewhat  less  highly  generalized  form,  we 
find  a  higher  level  of  material  wants  and  means  of  satisfy- 
ing them;  an  expansion  of  the  numbers  of  men,  their 
energies  and  their  contacts ;  greater  emphasis  upon  intel- 
1  Rev.  Internl.  de  Sociologie,  January,  1912,  pp.  21-2. 


THE  CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  II9 

lectual  values ;  wider  participation  in  all  material  and  in- 
tellectual gains  ;  therefore,  wider  concepts  of  truth,  greater 
liberty,  greater  order,  and  finally  greater  solidarity ;  for 
we  are  freest  when  love  and  intelligence  constrain  us  to 
identify  ourselves  with  our  fellows.  The  humanitarian 
gain  should  express  itself  in  the  growing  sentiment  against 
war  and  slavery,  in  the  conservation  of  infant  and  adult 
life,  prevention  of  such  diseases  as  tuberculosis,  syphilis,  and 
typhoid ;  in  the  desuetude  of  corporal  and  capital  punish- 
ments ;  in  fact,  in  the  radical  change  of  front  in  our  whole 
penal  machinery  from  retribution  and  terror  to  reformation 
and  prevention.  Institutional  progress  seems  to  be  in- 
dicated by  a  general  trend  from  force  to  rational  persua- 
sion. You  may  trace  this  movement  in  government,  in 
education,  in  religion,  in  the  family.^  Industrial  progress 
should  mean  more  real  needs  of  more  people  more  ade- 
quately satisfied,  with  a  surplus  for  further  development. 
Educational  progress  should  mean  generalizing  social 
achievement,  increasing  self-control,  and  decreasing  social 
control  by  repression. 


In  the  light  of  such  comprehensive  analyses  some  of  the 
narrower  tests  for  progress  must  be  examined.  First,  the(T) 
PjQPulatioiLJest.  Does  progress  mean  necessarily  a  large 
and  growing  population?  Does  the  total  of  well-being 
consist  in  a  small  per  capita  well-being  multiplied  into  the 
largest  number  of  units,  or  in  a  small  number  of  units 
multiplied    into    a    much    larger    per    capita    well-being? 

*  On  the  whole,  I  prefer  the  phrase  "rational  persuasion"  to  such  words 
as  "reason"  or  "justice"  used  by  some  writers  (for  example,  G.  L.  Beer  in 
The  New  Republic,  Feb.  12,  19 16).  Reason  and  justice  sound  static  and 
savor  of  absolutes,  besides  carrying  with  them  two  millenniums  of  metaphys- 
ical controversy. 


I20  THEORIES   OF   SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

What,  after  all,  is  the  test  of  a  proper-sized  population? 
The  Social  Darwinists  reply,  it  must  be  large  enough  to 
admit  of  proper  selection  of  the  fit;  population  must  be 
larger  than  economic  or  social  development  requires;  it 
must  be  large  enough  to  admit  of  necessary  ''wastage."  ^ 
But  such  doctrines  are  melting  away  before  the  common- 
sense  policy  of  conserving  the  population  already  born  in- 
stead of  over-stimulating  the  birth  rate  to  serve  some 
hypothetical  race-end.  The  most  serious-minded  Eugenists 
now  agree  that  not  large  populations,  but  good  popula- 
tions, are  the  ideal  of  civilized  men.^  The  King's  strength 
lies  more  in  the  quality  than  in  the  mere  numbers  of  his 
subjects.  The  greatest  contributions  to  civilization  appear 
to  have  come  from  small  nations  in  the  past;  the  future 
may  tell  a  similar  story. 

Close  analysis  of  the  plea  for  large  populations  will 
usually  reveal  one  or  all  of  five  motives :  an  attempt  to 
justify  existing  social  abuses  and  injustices  on  the  score 
that  nature  is  niggardly  and  that  she  must  have  a  large 
number  from  which  to  choose  those  worthy  to  receive  and 
hold  her  gifts ;  or  a  demand  for  cheap  and  superabundant 
labor,  whose  very  abundance  is  the  means  of  its  subjection 
to  capitalistic  over-lords  ;  or  international  fear  and  jealousy, 
whose  natural  expression  is  a  large  reserve  force  of  military 
strength  at  home  and  colonization  abroad  with  the  sur- 
plus ;  or  desire  by  a  militant  church  or  sect  for  the  money, 
the  votes,  the  children,  and  the  souls  of  cohorts  of  behevers ; 
or  sentimentalism  prating  about  millions  of  baby  souls 
that  knock  sweetly,  earnestly,  even  desperately  at  the 
gates  of  hfe,  and  demanding  with  a  tear  in  its  voice.  Shall 
we  commit  the  crime  of  denying  them  entrance?     On  the 

^  See,  e.g.,  Benjamin  Kidd,  Social  Evolution,  chaps,  ii,  iii,  pp.  209-10,  etc.; 
Karl  Pearson,  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,  25,  etc. 
2  For  example,  Havelock  Ellis,  Yale  Review,  April,  191 2, 


■^ 


THE  CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS  121 

other  hand,  it  is  perfectly  true  that  only  with  large  (but 
note  carefully,  not  too  large)  populations  can  come  the 
minute  division  of  labor  necessary  for  a  highly  developed 
system  of  production,  or  the  rapid  increase  of  wealth  and 
comfort  according  to  the  law  of  increasing  returns.  Among 
the  marks  of  a  "right-sized"  population  might  be  set 
down :  high  average  expectation  of  life,  no  perceptible 
deaths  from  need  or  misery ;  increasing  fitness  of  the 
average  individual ;  steadv  improvement  in  the  arts_of 
life ;  rising  standards"of  living.^  It  is  evident  that  the  test 
of  numbers  tails  unless  accompanied  by  certain  qualita- 
tive tests. 

A  second  test  i'^-  iprrpaginp;  lip^l^^ha^^^^  longevity.  An 
able  American  representative  of  the  medical  profession 
declared  recently  that  "the  average  length  of  life  is  the 
one  and  only  sure  index  of  whether  the  world  is  growing 
better;  it  is  the  unemotional  but  inexorable  measuring- 
rod  of  real  social  progress  that  can  be  told  in  figures. 
Other  standards  of  measurement  there  are,  but  they  are 
mostly  vague,  and  founded  largely  on  faith  and  hope. 
Here  is  one  that  is  based  on  definite  statistical  facts."  ^ 

In  spite  of  many  protests  to  the  contrary,  both  health 
and  longevity  seem  at  the  present  moment  actually  to  be 
on  the  increase.  Throughout  practically  the  whole  of  the 
Western  world  the  death  rate  is  pretty  steadily  declining. 
M.  Levasseur  by  comparing  statistical  studies  of  France 
in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  discovered  an 
increasing  vitality  in  the  French  population,  measured  by 
decreasing  or  postponed  mortality.^  Professor  P.  C. 
Mitchell  states  that  the  mean  duration  of  life  in  France 

^  Cf.  Haushofer,  Bevolkerungslehre,  96-7. 

^  Dr.  Norman  Bridge,  Aincr.  Jour.  Sociol.,  20  :  449;  cf.  for  a  general  dis- 
cussion of  the  relation  between  sanitation  and  progress,  W.  H.  Allen,  Amer. 
Jour.  Social.,  8 :  631-43. 

^  La  Population  Frangaise,  ii,  chap.  xvi. 


® 


122  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

rose  during  the  nineteenth  century  from  29  to  40  years.^ 
In  the  United  States  the  average  age  at  death  was  31.1 
years  in  1890,  35.2  in  1900,  38.7  in  19 10.  The  average  age 
at  death  is  of  course  not  to  be  confused  with  the  average 
expectation  of  Hfe,  but  it  may  be  taken  as  an  approximate 
measure  of  it ;  and  in  the  absence  of  accurate  Hfe  tables 
in  the  United  States,  we  have  to  content  ourselves  with 
such  rough  approximations.  In  Germany,  within  the  last 
25  years  or  so,  average  longevity  has  risen  for  males  from 
38.1  to  48.85  years;  for  females  from  42.5  to  54.9  years. ^ 
Professor  Finkelnburg  estimates  that  the  average  length  of 
human  life  in  the  sixteenth  century  was  only  between  18 
and  20  years,  and  that  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury it  was  a  little  over  30  years,  while  to-day  it  is  between 
38  and  40  years,  —  a  gain  of  one  hundred  per  cent,  in  three 
centuries.  Professor  Irving  Fisher  comes  to  the  same 
conclusion  from  life-span  records  of  Geneva,  running  back 
three  centuries :  they  indicate  a  rise  in  the  expectancy  of 
life  from  21.2  years  in  the  sixteenth  century  to  39.7  in  the 
nineteenth.^  As  to  the  criterion  of  decreased  physical  sufifer- 
ing  Doctor  Osier  writes :  "  .  .  .  measure  as  we  may  the 
progress  of  the  world  .  .  .  there  is  no  one  measure  which 
can  compare  with  the  decrease  of  physical  suffering  in 
man,  woman,  and  child  when  stricken  by  disease  or  acci- 
dent." And  Dr.  E.  T.  Devine,  who  quotes  these  words 
with  manifest  approval,  concludes  that  on  the  whole  hu- 
manity meets  this  test  and  that  health  is  rising.^  But  we 
must  remember  that  a  pasteurized,  sanitized  society  is  not 
necessarily  progressive  nor  dynamic.  Health,  long  life, 
sanitation  are  contributors  to  social  well-being,  but  are 


'  Eleventh  ed.  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  Article  "Longevity." 
^  Stalistik  fiir  das  Deutsche  Reich,  vol.  xx. 

^  Report  on  National  Vitality,  Its  Wastes  and  Conservation,  p.  17. 
*  Misery  and  its  Causes,  74-89. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS  123 

not  its  only  benefactors ;   they  make  it  possible,  but  do  not 
guarantee  its  increase  or  permanence. 

Third  test:    wealth.     Professor  J.  B.  Clark  ^  sets  down 
as  the  five  marks  of  a  dynamic  society :    (i)  an  increase  in 
population ;    (2)   an    increase  in    capital ;    (3)   changes  in 
methods  of  production  ;   (4)  changes  in  economic  organiza- 
tion ;  (5)  changes  in  consumers'  wants.     But  each  of  these 
or  all  of  them  taken  together  may  yield  certain  pathologic 
by-products  which  may  overtop  any  absolute  gains  in  social 
well-being.     We  encounter  frequently  the  statement  that 
increase  in  numbers  and  in  national  wealth  are  the  indices 
of   "verifiable   progress."     But   statistics   cited    to   prove 
soaring  national  or  per  capita  wealth  may  only  represent 
highly  inflated  speculative  values  and  may  say  absolutely 
nothing  about  the  real  distribution  of  wealth.     Hence,  if 
we  take  material  wealth  as  a  criterion  of  social  progress  it 
must  be  from  the  standpoint  of  general  participation  in 
real  wealth.     There  must  be  something  more  than  shoddy 
campaign  speeches  about  the  full  dinner  pail  and  passing 
prosperity  around.     Conversely,  before  joining  in  the  hue 
and  cry  raised  by  opponents  of  economic  reform  as  'raids 
on  prosperity  '  and  hindrances  to  progress,  one  must  be 
sure  that  he  has  received  a  valid  definition  of  what  this 
prosperity  is  and  clear-cut  knowledge  of  whose  prosperity 
is  involved.     Thus  progress  to  Professor  Ashley,  the  English 
economist,  spells  "improvement  in  the  economic  condition 
of  the  body  of  the  people."     It  would  not  appear  unfair  to 
assume  that  Professor  Ashley  meant  to  stress  the  phrase, 
"body  of  the  people."     If  you  compare  this   test  with 
Cardinal  Manning's  phrasing  of  it  a  generation  ago  you 
will  see  how  much  more  generous  and  really  constructive 
the  economist  is.     The  Cardinal,  speaking  as  a  religious 
humanitarian,  found  a  progressive  society  to  be  one  in 
^  Essentials  of  Economic  Theory,  203-6. 


124  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

/  which  the  benefits  of  material  progress  were  extended  to 
the  poor.^ 

If  we  accept  the  principle  involved  in  the  phrase  "body 
of  the  people,"  can  progress  mean  the  bettering  of  any  one 
class  in  any  of  these  directions  at  the  expense  of  any  other  ? 
Of  an  educated  and  artistic  elite,  say,  at  the  cost  of  the  pro- 
letariat ?  Or  of  workingmen  at  the  expense  of  employers  ? 
Should  the  scholar  arrogantly  ride  on  the  shoulders  of  all 
the  other  classes  and  professions?  Manifestly,  no. 
Social  progress  involves  the  harmonious  development 
of  every  constituent  member  and  group  in  society, 
this  harmony  to  be  determined  by  the  fitness  of  the  society 
to  meet  the  exigencies  of  nature  and  self-conscious  life,  to 
grapple  with  its  problems  of  to-day,  and  to  provide  for 
going  on  to-morrow.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  utili- 
tarian formula  of  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number 
might  be  clapped  to  the  concept  of  progress  and  made  to 
fit  exactly.  Some  American  sociologists  have  revised  this 
formula  until  it  more  accurately  defines  progress,  though, 
I  grant,  in  less  euphonious  terms.  They  call  progress  that 
change  taking  place  in  society  whereby  society  as  a  whole 
is  enabled  to  function  at  an  ever  decreasing  cost  to  the 
individuals  composing  it  —  scientific  management  applied 
to  the  Costs  of  Progress?  —  or  put  more  positively,  the 
change  that  affords  an  ever-increasing  amount  of  happiness 
to  an  ever-increasing  number  of  individuals. 

Put  in  still  another  way,  the  economic  test  for  social 
progress  is  the  satisfaction  of  the  needs  of  the  individual 
more  and  more  efficiently  by  means  of  community  life.^ 
H.  G.  Wells  applies  practically  the  same  yard-stick;  he 
believes  we  are  progressing  because  the  "world  is  a  better 

^  Oration  "On  Progress,"  delivered  to  the  Young  Men's  Catholic  Associa- 
tion, Oct.  lo,  1871. 

2  Prof.  Andre  de  May,  Rev.  Internatl.  de  Social.,  June,  1913. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  1 25 

place  for  a  common  man  than  ever  it  was  before,  the 
spectacle  wider  and  richer  and  deeper  and  more  charged 
with  hope  and  promise."  ^  Other  writers  phrase  the  test 
as  the  democratizing  of  social  opportunity.  George  Gun- 
ton,  for  example,  writes:  "Under  all  conditions,  without 
regard  to  race,  climate,  or  state  of  development,  the  uni- 
versal principle  —  the  first  essential  condition  upon  which 
the  permanent  progress  of  society  depends  —  is  the  en- 
larged social  opportunities  of  the  masses.''  ^  David  Starr 
Jordan  carries  the  test  a  step  further:  "The  actual 
condition  of  a  nation  is  not  judged  by  its  wealth, 
by  its  universities,  its  arts  or  sciences,  still  less  by 
its  military  pomp  or  prestige.  The  final  test  of  any 
nation  is  in  the  opportunity  it  gives  its  average  man 
and  still  more  in  the  fitness  of  the  average  man  to 
grasp  this  opportunity."^ 

Hence  it  is  apparent  that  progress  means  an  increasing 
ability  for  every  individual,  for  'all  the  children  of  all  the 
people'  to  interest  themselves  in  and  to  participate  in 
every  healthful  winning  that  humanity  has  made.  It 
means  for  every  member  of  society  a  wider  share  in  hfe, 
the  life  more  abundant,  and  not  merely  in  the  means  of 
increased  production.  The  elder  Lord  Asquith  once  said, 
"The  test  of  every  civilization  is  the  point  below  which 
the  weakest  and  most  unfortunate  are  allowed  to  fall." 
Or,  from  the  historial  standpoint,  progress  may  be  measured 
by  the  decreasing  ratio  of  those  who  live  or  are  compelled 
to  live  from  hand  to  mouth. ^  Hence  a  progressive  society 
is  one  which  not  only  favors  the  mountain  peaks  of  excep- 
tional ability  and  opens  to  the  widest  the  door  of  oppor- 


*  New  Worlds  for  Old,  10. 

*  Wealth  and  Progress,  229,  240,  376. 
3  Heredity  of  Richard  Roe,  88. 

*  Cf.  Dealey,  Sociology,  Its  Simpler  Teachings  and  Applications,  108. 


126  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

timity  for  the  average  man,  but  which  also  will  not  tolerate 
hving  conditions  below  a  relatively  high  minimum  standard 
of  decency.     A  mountain  peak  has  but  little  significance 
Nin  a  world  of  pigpens. 

Fourth,  the  moral  test.  Does  progress  reduce  to  terms 
of  moral  progress?  Froude  defended  this  view.  What  is 
often  called  progress,  he  argues,  is  only  change,  and  change 
sometimes  for  the  worse.  Mere  heaping  up  wealth,  or 
extension  of  sujffrage,  may  not  be  progress  at  all.  Purity, 
justice,  right,  unselfishness,  are  the  criteria  of  real  social 
advance.  The  progress  of  civilization  depends  on  the 
extent  of  the  domain  which  is  reclaimed  under  the  moral 
law.  Nations  have  been  historically  great  in  proportion 
to  their  success  in  this  direction.^  But  here  we  must  ask, 
what  is  the  moral  law?  Morals  are  a  social  product.^ 
Whose  ethical  standards  shall  we  apply  ?  There  is  another 
difficulty.  Some  philosophers  have  declared  that  mankind 
really  make  no  moral  progress ;  that  the  human  spirit  is  in 
some  way  or  other  absolutely  and  irreducibly  moral ;  hence 
that  the  only  possible  moral  progress  is  a  mere  substitution 
of  one  set  of  moral  values  for  another,  both  equally  good  and 

1  In  Short  Studies,  2d  series,  the  essay  on  "Progress,"  particularly 
pp.  274-5. 

2  Professor  Carver  in  his  criticism  of  those  who  can  find  no  simple  moral 
order  because  they  find  such  widely  varying  mores  and  conscience  codes, 
seems  to  me  to  beg  the  whole  question.  He  posits  the  moral  order  as  that 
demonstrably  right  order  which  has  been  selected  from  the  great  mass  of 
moral  systems.  The  moral  order  is  the  sum  of  the  principles  of  the  universe. 
Accepting  them  and  conforming  to  them,  that  is  righteousness,  that  is 
morality,  that  is  the  morality.  But  how  does  Professor  Carver  know  what 
the  principles  of  the  universe  are?  Let  him  read  the  38th  chapter  of  Job, 
let  him  try  to  define  a  "law  of  nature,"  or  clear  up  the  mystery  of  the  atom 
or  psychophysical  correlation,  and  see  if  it  is  still  possible  to  dogmatize  on 
the  natural  order  or  the  moral  order.  Are  we  sure  that  the  selective  process 
has  picked  out  the  final  winner,  the  moral  order?  Remember  always  that 
folkways  or  conscience  codes  are  attempts  to  find  and  fit  into  a  moral  order. 
The  pragmatic  test  of  health,  longevity,  intelligence,  order,  productivity,  is 
the  only  one  we  can  apply  to  determine  whether  this  or  that  is  the  better 
moral  order. 


^^  ,  -   -      ^1 

THE  CRITERIA  OF  P|<OGRESS  127 

valid.  Ethnographers  speak  of  kindness,  honesty,  generos- 
ity, tenderness  and  many  other  amiable  virtues  among 
rank  savages.  Are  we  better  than  they?  Well,  we  are 
not  to  understand  that  all  savages  exemplify  all  these  vir- 
tues. If  my  picture  of  very  primitive  life  be  not  over- 
drawn, many  of  our  modern  virtues  were  conspicuously 
absent  or  were  present  only  in  crude  forms.  Indeed,  be- 
cause of  primitive  man's  narrow  range  of  wants,  he  lacks 
the  strong  incentives  to  action  which  we  should  brand 
as  immoral,  hence  his  morality  is  on  the  whole  simply 
negative.  Moreover  when  genuine  primitive  men  or 
when  supposedly  civilized  men  revert  to  savagery  under 
pressure  of  the  struggle  for  life,  moral  principles  go  by 
the  board. 

Probably  we  are  hardly  in  a  position  yet  to  answer  cate- 
gorically the  question  as  to  absolute  moral  progress.  His- 
torical materials  run  back  only  a  few  milleniums,  and  the 
comparative  study  of  primitive  peoples  is  still  in  its  scien- 
tific infancy.  Moreover,  the  term  ''character"  carries 
such  a  load  of  personal  preconceptions  that  it  is  hardly 
standardized  to  the  point  of  being  usable  in  exact  com- 
parative studies.  But  there  are  certain  aspects  of  the 
problem  which  we  can  attack  with  relative  assurance.  We 
all  recognize  three  more  or  less  distinct  lines  of  possible 
moral  development,  namely,  (i)  in  ethical  concepts;  (2)  in 
the  estabhshed  principles  of  social  organization  and  societal 
relations ;  (3)  in  the  character  of  human  beings.  It  is  per- 
fectly evident  that  moral  ideals  have  become  broader  and, 
clearer  in  their  development  out  of  those  bhnd,  irrational 
sanctions  which  we  call  "folkways"  or  custom,  into  rational 
purposive,  conscious  codes  of  conduct.  I  do  not  mean 
that  everybody  has  attained  such  ethical  clarity,  but  simply 
that,  taking  humanity  as  a  whole,  the  trend  in  the  direction 
of  rationality  and  clarity  is  unmistakable.     So  obvious  is 


128  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

it  that  Hobhouse  calls  it  the  "fundamental  change  effected 
in  the  course  of  human  history."^ 

To  Alexander  we  owe  the  most  vigorous  attempt  to 
apply  the  principle  of  selection  in  the  field  of  morals  and 
to  prove  that  morals  do  progress.  Indeed,  he  holds  that 
morality  by  very  definition  means  progress.  All  morality 
is  a  process  of  change,  of  development,  and  this  develop- 
ment is  always  in  the  direction  of  goodness.  "Progress, 
the  most  important  of  the  dynamic  conceptions,  will  be 
found  to  be  involved  in  all  morality.  ...  It  will  be  found 
that  moral  ideals  move  by  a  process  which,  allowing  for 
differences,  repeats  the  law  by  which  natural  species 
develop,  and  of  this  process  the  dynamical  conceptions 
represent  different  elements.  .  .  .  Progress  is  essential  to 
morality.  Every  moral  ideal  is  an  arrested  moment  in  the 
passage  from  one  ideal  to  a  higher."  Hence  moral  progress 
is  not  only  possible  but  inevitable  as  the  result  of  the 
struggle  between  ideals  in  which  the  best  and  fittest  sur- 
vive.^ This  is  an  attractive  theory,  but  falls  short  of  abso- 
lute conviction  on  two  scores :  first,  the  facts  do  not  war- 

^  Morals  in  Evolution,  ii,  278;  i,  20  ff.,  37  etc.,  Westermarck  holds  that 
there  has  been  moral  progress  at  least  in  the  field  of  moral  judgments.  Since 
"society  is  the  birthplace  of  the  moral  consciousness,"  it  is  evident  that,  as 
we  have  already  pointed  out,  whatever  broadens  the  area  of  wholesome  social 
contact  and  sympathy  enriches  moral  consciousness.  Civilized  moral  judg- 
ments embrace  wider  circles  of  men  and  are  more  enlightened  than  those  of 
our  primitive  forbears,  says  Westermarck.  "The  change  of  cognitions  or 
ideas  has  thus  produced  a  change  of  emotions.  Now  the  evolution  of  the 
moral  consciousness  partly  consists  in  its  development  from  the  unreflecting 
to  the  reflecting  stage,  from  the  unenlightened  to  the  enlightened.  This 
appears  from  the  decreasing  influence  of  external  events  upon  moral  judg- 
ments and  from  the  growing  discrimination  with  reference  to  motives,  negli- 
gence and  other  factors  in  conduct  which  are  carefully  considered  by  a 
scrupulous  judge."  Origin  and  Development  of  the  Moral  Ideas,  ii,  740  ff. 
See  also  the  debate  on  these  points  between  Barth  and  Vierkandt  in  Vier- 
teljaltrschrift  f.  wissenschajlliche  Philosophie,  vol.  23  (1899),  pp.  76-116,  455- 
490. 

*  S.  Alexander,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  pp.  18-19,  369,  399-400,  chaps, 
iii,  iv,  etc. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  129 

rant  the  assumption  that  the  fittest  in  the  sense  of  being 
morally  best  inevitably  survive.  On  the  whole  this  may 
have  been  true  of  the  past,  but  it  is  not  guaranteed  to  the 
future.  Again,  the  argument  seems  to  double  hopelessly 
back  upon  itself  by  its  concept  of  goodness  as  adaptation. 
Such  a  degeneration  as  the  Mammoth  Cave  blind  fish  or 
the  tapeworm  is  considered  by  Alexander  as  progress,  prog- 
ress in  adjustment  to  new  conditions.  "Goodness  or 
rightness,"  he  says,  "means  an  equilibrium  of  conduct." 
The  escape  from  this  vicious  circle  would  appear  to  be 
through  distinguishing  between  passive  adaptation  and 
active  domination  or  control  in  increasing  measure  over 
the  natural  and  social  environment.  The  growth  of  this 
type  of  moral  adaptation  is  pretty  evident. 

Perhaps  the  evolution  in  principles  of  social  organization 
is  a  little  less  obvious,  but  it  is  none  the  less  sure.  The 
evidence  cited  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  chapter,  the 
facts  in  politics  and  social  organization  brought  to  light 
in  Hobhouse's  study,  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory, 
and  the  enormous  shifting  of  thought  and  practice  sum- 
marized under  our  phrase  "trend  from  force  to  rational 
persuasion"  {ante,  p.  119)  indicate  this  institutional  phase 
of  social  and  moral  improvement.  One  thing  more  is 
pretty  evident,  namely,  that  moral  evolution  and  social 
progress  become  parallel  and  fuse  when  the  stage  of  de- 
liberate conscious  activity  is  reached.  Perception  of  this 
truth  is  the  key  to  Comte's  system  of  positive  morality, 
a  system  of  increasing  scientific  control  over  all  the  condi- 
tions of  social  life.^ 

When  confronted  with  the  third  possible  phase  of  moral 

evolution,  namely,  improvement  in  human  character,  we 

have  to  admit    that   it  is  a   highly  debatable    question. 

There  may  be  an  "ameliorative  drift"  running  through  the 

*  Cf.  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  ii,  279. 

K 


130  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ages,  but  we  have  no  instruments  patient  or  delicate  enough 
to  measure  it.  Until  we  unearth  more  of  buried  history 
and  grasp  something  of  the  process  of  heredity,  especially 
mental  inheritance,  we  shall  probably  go  on  debating.  If 
the  eugenists  discover  some  way  of  concentrating  into  a 
short  space  of  time  the  operation  of  natural  selection,  we 
may  secure  some  credible  data  in  the  matter  of  moral 
heredity.  Meanwhile  it  is  permissible  to  conceive  of  char- 
acter as  dynamic,  as  composed  of  ethical  concepts  and  social 
pressures  which  select,  reenforce,  twist,  repress,  or  effectively 
nulHfy  the  instincts  and  other  hereditary  elements  which 
constitute  humanity's  moral  "set."  Human  character 
taken  in  this  sense  may  be  said  to  improve  as  its  conscious 
and  rational  elements  grow  and  are  illuminated  with  what 
we  called  in  earher  chapters  "eflficient  imagination."  It 
is  encouraging  to  find  one  of  the  most  stimulating  among 
the  newer  generation  of  writers  on  politics  in  substantial 
agreement  with  this  position.  He  says:  "It  is  probably 
true  that  the  impulses  of  men  have  changed  very  little 
within  recorded  history.  What  has  changed  enormously 
from  epoch  to  epoch  is  the  character  in  which  these  im- 
pulses appear.  The  impulses  that  at  one  period  work 
themselves  out  into  cruelty  and  lust  may  at  another  pro- 
duce the  richest  values  of  civilized  Hfe.  The  statesman 
can  affect  that  choice."  ^  This  is  tantamount  to  saying 
that  moral  progress  is  possible,  and  for  these  reasons: 
human  nature  is  a  complex  of  almost  infinite  potencies, 
good,  bad,  and  indifferent.  Between  these  potential  ele- 
ments of  character  ceaseless  conflict  is  going  on.  The  social 
environment  selects  now  one  set  of  these  characters,  now 
another.  The  hunter  and  the  nomad  go  down  before  the 
settled  cultivator;  the  peaceful  trader  ousts  the  bandit; 
the  explosive,  violent  temper  yields  place  to  the  cool- 
^  Walter  Lippmann,  A  Preface  to  Politics,  3CX3. 


THE  CRITERIA   OF  PROGRESS  131 

headed  calculator.     Thus  the  human  animal  settles  into 
the  harness  of  civilization. 

Hence  it  is  permissible  to  conceive  of  real  moral  prog- 
ress as  a  series  of  selected  human  types,  combinations  of 
higher  or  more  refined  character  elements,  while  at  the 
same  time  believing  that  these  character  elements,  as  latent 
possibilities,  were  given  once  for  all  by  creative  fiat  or  won 
by  natural  selection  ages  ago.  It  is  perfectly  possible  that 
some  germs  of  altruistic  emotion  may  be  found  in  the 
animal  world  below  man ;  and  it  is  certain  that  the  most 
rudimentary  men  known  display  altruistic  sentiments. 
Hence  we  may  assume  that  altruism  as  an  element  in  moral 
character  lies  latent  in  our  earliest  ancestry.  But,  as 
Westermarck  seems  to  have  proved,  this  altruistic  senti- 
ment has  expanded  to  a  marked  degree,  even  during  his- 
toric times.  The  inference  is  clear :  man's  emotional 
nature  has  improved  in  this  regard,  and  may  be  expected 
to  continue  improving,  given  proper  circumstances.  Thus 
the  moral  judgments  based  upon  this  sentiment  have  pari 
passu  been  refined  and  will  attain  even  higher  refinement. 
Moreover,  it  is  probable  that  a  certain  complexity  in  moral 
character  is  being  selected  in  response  to  the  pressure  of 
growing  social  complexity.  Not  everybody  can  rise  to 
this  new  level.  Many  of  us  fall  by  the  wayside  and  are 
classed  as  misdemeanants.  Those  who  respond  to  the  new 
demands  for  self-control,  imagination,  and  good  temper 
may  be  rated  as  higher  in  moral  character  than  their  for- 
bears whose  simple  domestic  virtues  would  not  suffice 
in  these  times.  But  such  a  rating  involves  some  objective 
standards  or  definitions  of  the  word  "goodness."  These 
standards  carry  us  back  to  the  environment  of  moral  con- 
cepts and  social  organization.  Therefore,  it  would  be 
proper  to  place  one's  trust  in  the  manipulation  of  the  social 
environment  to  select  the  types  of  moral  character  con- 


132  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ceived  as  higher  than  those  previously  sanctioned.  This 
would  at  least  be  more  practicable  than  to  rely  wholly 
upon  selective  breeding  to  discover  and  perpetuate  superior 
moral  types.  There  is  no  sound  evidence  that  ideas  of 
eugenic  parenthood  injected  into  the  mores  would  guaran- 
tee us  continuous  and  abiding  moral  progress,  as  Chapin 
thinks.^ 

3 

Denials  of  Progress 

It  seems  highly  probable  that  the  beHef  that  mankind 
do  not  progress  morally,  coupled  with  the  observation  of 
just  those  inequahties  along  the  marching  front  of  hu- 
manity which  we  noted  under  the  phrase  "costs  of  prog- 
ress," may  have  prompted  some  notable  thinkers  in  their 
denial  of  any  such  thing  as  progress  at  all.  Goethe  recog- 
nized that  men  become  more  intelligent  and  prudent,  but 
denied  that  they  grow  better,  happier,  or  more  energetic. 
We  frequently  find  the  same  dictum  in  the  form  that  hu- 
man institutions  improve,  but  not  humanity  itself.  But 
how  can  we  legitimately  separate  man  from  his  institutions  ? 
Ail  that  we  can  say  is  that  some  men  are  better,  others 
worse,  than  the  institutions  of  their  social  group.  Or  we 
may  meet  Goethe's  objection  by  saying  that  perhaps  no 
modern  man  has  attained  the  clear  moral  vision  of  Moses, 
Socrates,  or  Jesus,  but  that  the  general  level  of  group  good- 
ness, happiness,  and  energy  is  measurably  higher  than  it 
was  twenty  or  thirty  centuries  ago.  Frederic  Le  Play 
deplored  the  crumbling  of  religious  faith  and  of  respect  for 
authority  as  marks  of  a  decadent,  unprogressive  world ; 
and  he  proposed  to  make  the  world  progressive  by  going 
back  to  some  fancied  golden  age  of  patriarchal  authority 

^  F.  S.  Chapin,  Popular  Sci.  Mo.,  May,  1915,  p.  471. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  133 

in  industry  and  religion.  But  he  failed  to  take  into  ac- 
count the  fact  that  authority  may  be  reorganized  upon  a 
more  stable  basis  —  democracy ;  that  rehgion  may  have 
outworn  its  forms  and  ancient  functions ;  that  family  hfe 
seems  to  be  approaching  a  more  equitable  and  stable  ad- 
justment of  the  interests  and  sentiments  of  all  the  parties 
concerned ;  and  finally  that  under  modern  industrial 
organization  life  is  considerably  better  insured  than  it  ever 
was  under  the  patriarchate.  Under  feudalism  and  the 
old  industrial  order  a  "pain  economy"  or  regime  )i  deficit 
prevailed.  Practically  all  the  members  of  a  social  group 
were  in  misery ;  only  the  few  who  constituted  the  families 
of  the  feudal  lords  or  the  favorites  of  the  patriarch  were 
sufficiently  padded  about  with  material  goods  to  secure 
them  against  a  precarious  existence.  Poverty,  or  a  pauper 
disinherited  class,  as  we  understand  these  terms  nowadays, 
was  practically  unknown :  for  the  simple  reason  that  all, 
with  the  few  exceptions  noted,  belonged  to  this  class  and 
made  scarcely  more  ado  about  the  burden  of  their  lot 
than  they  did  about  having  to  carry  the  weight  of  the 
atmosphere  upon  their  shoulders. 

From  another  angle  comes  Gumplowicz'  criticism  to 
the  effect  that  while  some  aineliorafion  of  the  state  of  man 
is  possible  in  the  remote  future,  it  is  so  remote  in  time  as 
to  be  quite  negligible  from  the  standpoint  of  practical  con- 
siderations ;  from  all  appearances  we  simply  go  through 
the  motions  but  get  nowhere.  Gumplowicz,  like  Goethe, 
seems  to  forget  that  human  advance  has  both  quantitative 
and  qualitative  reference ;  to  neglect  either  aspect  means 
to  flounder  in  the  Slough  of  Despond  and  fallacy.^  M. 
Georges  Sorel,  the  philosopher  of  Syndicalism,  offers  an- 
other, and  unmistakably  able,  denial  of  progress.     He  re- 

^  See  chap,  xviii  for  more  detailed  exposition  of  Gumplowicz'  position 
and  criticism  thereof. 


134  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

views  the  naive  perfectionist  doctrines  of  Turgot  and  Con-  / 
dorcet,  the  progressivism  of  Madame  de  Stael,  and  the 
applications  of  early  nineteenth  century  evolutionism  to 
politics  (De  Tocqueville's  idea  of  the  necessity  and  inevi- 
tableness  of  democracy)  and  to  social  organization  (Prou- 
dhon's  vision  of  the  certain  march  of  equahty).  Sorel  sees 
in  such  men  as  Fouillee  impudent  accumulators  of  lies 
when  they  affirm  that  with  progress  of  democracy  they 
observe  a  progressive  sentiment  of  human  dignity,  Hberty, 
and  human  autonomy.  But  having  mowed  down  all 
these  pretended  fields  of  progress,  he  leaves  unscathed  his 
own  private  field,  and  openly  declares  that  there  has  been 
industrial  progress !  Here,  again,  we  are  obviously  con- 
fronted with  a  case  of  philosophic  or  Hterary  myopia.  As 
we  hope  to  show  later,  substantial  industrial  progress  is 
impossible  without  secular  amelioration  along  other  lines. 

It  is  apparently  necessary  to  the  propaganda  of  revo- 
lutionary sociahsm  and  philosophic  anarchism  that  the 
defects  of  modern  social  Hfe  be  painted  in  the  most  garish 
colors.  Marx  and  Engels  were  not  guiltless  of  this  method 
of  providing  a  foil  to  their  teaching.  And  anarchists  like 
Mr.  Edward  Carpenter  or  Miss  Emma  Goldman  scarcely 
bother  to  use  a  brush.  It  would  hardly  be  necessary  to 
introduce  a  serious  discussion  of  such  an  essay  as  Mr. 
Carpenter's  Civilization:  Its  Cause  and  Cure,  were  it  not 
for  the  fact  that  its  very  title  and  the  attractive  style  in 
which  it  is  written  have  won  for  it  a  wide  hearing.  It  is 
really  a  belated  echo  of  eighteenth  century  idyls  about  the 
"happy  savage."  Mr.  Carpenter  gravely  assures  us  that 
civilization  is^^ disease  which  the  various  races  of  men 
have  to  pass  through,  as"  children  pass  through  measles  or 
whooping  cough ;  that  civilization  is  a  terminus  ad  quem 
of  social  evolution,  and  that  development  aVays  succumbs 
or  is  arrested  at  that  point;    that  the  Western  world  is 


THE   CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS  135 

even  now  in  that  plight ;  but  that  there  is  some  hope  for 
us  in  two  significant  movements  now  attaining  consider- 
able force,  namely,  towards  a  "complex  human  Com- 
munism and  towards  individual  freedom  and  Savagery." 
While  we  are  grateful  that  there  is  a  way  of  escape,  we  are 
none  too  enchanted  by  the  prospect  of  the  state  whither 
we  are  reverting.  Moreover,  the  ethnographic  evidence 
which  is  brought  in  to  reconstruct  for  our  imagination  the 
Eden  we  have  lost,  is,  to  say  the  least,  naive  to  a  degree. 
We  are  assured,  for  illustration,  that  savages  are  uniformly 
healthier,  and  I  suppose  by  implication  we  might  add,  longer 
lived  than  ourselves :  implications  which  are  refuted  by 
such  facts  as  the  enormously  high  infant  mortality  rate 
among  primitive  peoples,  the  rarity  of  old  men  and  women, 
the  terrible  plagues  and  pests  which  sometimes  sweep 
away  whole  savage  tribes,  the  universality  of  the  medicine- 
man, the  gradual  but  steady  increase  in  longevity  and  the 
chances  of  hfe  especially  within  the  last  three  hundred 
years.  Again,  we  are  required  to  believe  that  government 
is  a  modern  invention  because  we  have  poHcemen  and 
savages  have  not !  And  that  honesty  is  a  virtue  which 
was  lost  when  our  primitive  forbears  outgrew  their  com- 
munistic economy.  Thus  we  might  go  on  to  show  how  this 
whole  essay  is  a  tissue  of  picturesque  particulars  erected 
into  broad  generalizations,  of  false  emphasis  and  rhetorical 
indictment.  Without  in  the  least  attempting  to  gloss  over 
present  social  evils,  we  must  in  all  honesty  insist  that 
critics  of  the  present  order  shall  stick  to  facts,  whether 
they  are  reconstructing  the  past  or  tearing  the  scales  from 
our  deluded  eyes.  If  progress  is  an  illusion,  nature-faking 
or  juggling  with  ethnology  and  history  invite  condemnation. 
The  tale  of  the  critics  of  progress  would  be  incomplete 
without  some  reference  to  Mr.  G.  B.  Shaw.  There  is  no 
shilly-shallying  in  his  attempt  to  disillusion  his  audience. 


136  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

He   throws   a  well-aimed   bomb   at   their   dearest   hopes. 
"Civilization,"  he  declares  flatly,  "is  a  disease  produced  / 
by  the  practice  of  building  societies  with  rotten  materials."  / 
Progress?     Humanity  has  not  progressed  a  step  since  the 
days  of  the  Hittites. 

"The  more  ignorant  men  are,  the  more  convinced  are 
they  that  their  little  parish  and  their  little  chapter  is  an 
apex  to  which  civilization  and  philosophy  have  painfully 
struggled  up  the  pyramid  of  time  from  a  desert  of  savagery. 
.  .  .  The  whole  process  is  summed  up  as  Progress  with  a 
capital  P.  And  any  elderly  gentleman  of  Progressive 
temperament  will  testify  that  the  improvement  since  he 
was  a  boy  is  enormous.  Now,  if  we  count  the  generations 
of  Progressive  elderly  gentlemen  since,  say,  Plato,  and  add 
together  the  successive  enormous  improvements  to  which 
each  of  them  has  testified,  it  will  strike  us  at  once  as  an 
unaccountable  fact  that  the  world,  instead  of  having  been 
improved  in  sixty-seven  generations  out  of  all  recognition, 
presents,  on  the  whole,  a  rather  less  dignified  appearance 
in  Ibsen's  'Enemy  of  the  People,'  than  in  Plato's  'Re- 
pubHc'  "  1 

He  goes  on  to  deny  that  murder  with  a  Mauser  rifle  is 
any  less  grievous  than  murder  with  a  poisoned  arrow.  He 
declares  the  supposed  "increased  command  over  nature" 
to  be  a  great  illusion.  The  condition  of  the  American 
Negro  is  anything  but  an  index  of  progress.  In  the  Revo- 
lutionist's Handbook  ^  he  insinuates  that  most  so-called 
progress   is   mere   Tweedle-dum    and   Tweedle-dee,    mere 

^  Notes  to  "  Caesar  and  Cleopatra,"  in  Three  Plays  for  Puritans,  pp.  199- 
203. 

^  Man  and  Superman,  pp.  181-2,  193,  206-7.  Shaw's  vehemence  is 
strongly  reminiscent  of  Nietzsche's  passionate  denial  of  progress.  "  Fort- 
schritt  —  Dass  wir  uns  nicht  tauschen !  .  .  .  Das  ist  der  Augenschein, 
von  dem  die  Besonnensten  verfiihrt  werden.  .  .  .  Die  'Menschheit' 
avancirt  nicht,  sie  existirt  nicht  einmal.  .  .  .  Der  Mensch  ist  kein  Fort- 
schritt  gegen  das  Thier :  der  Cultur-Zartling  ist  eine  Missgeburt  im  Ver- 
gleich  zum  Araber  und  Corsen  .  .  ."  etc.     {Der  Wille  zur  Machl,  sec.  90.) 


THE   CRITERIA  OE  PROGRESS  137 

"transfigurations  of  institutions."  He  admits  an  occa- 
sional illusion  of  moral  evolution,  as  when  the  victory  of 
the  commercial  caste  over  the  military  caste  leads  to  the 
substitution  of  social  boycotting  and  pecuniary  damages 
for  duehng;  and  further,  that  at  certain  moments  there 
may  even  be  a  considerable  material  advance ;  but  both 
are  mere  readjustment  and  reformation.  Sir  Oracle  de- 
clares that  we  "may  as  well  make  up  our  minds  that  Man 
will  return  to  his  idols  and  his  cupidities,  in  spite  of  all 
'movements'  and  all  revolutions,  until  his  nature  is 
changed.  .  .  .  Whilst  Man  remains  what  he  is,  there 
can  be  no  progress  beyond  the  point  already  attained  and 
fallen  headlong  from  at  every  attempt  at  civilization ;  and 
since  that  point  is  but  a  pinnacle  to  which  a  few  people 
cHng  in  giddy  terror  above  an  abyss  of  squalor,  mere  prog- 
ress should  no  longer  charm  us.  .  .  .  We  must  therefore 
frankly  give  up  the  notion  that  man  as  he  exists  is  capable 
of  net  progress."  What  shall  we  do  about  it?  Whither 
turn  to  escape  the  abyss?  Stop  all  this  silly  goose-cackle 
about  progress,  says  Shaw,  and  get  down  to  the  bed-rock 
business  of  creating  a  race  of  Supermen;  aid  evolution 
through  a  Socialism  which  will  stand  for  the  selective  breed- 
ing of  Man. 

All  this  is  not  nearly  so  dreadful  as  at  first  appears. 
For  in  spite  of  all  the  swagger  which  Mr.  Shaw  assumes  in 
his  disillusionment,  and  in  spite  of  the  extravagance  of 
utterance,  he  would  be  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  deny 
the  possibility  of  progress.  His  only  contention  really  is 
that  progress  cannot  come  so  long  as  man  remains  what  he 
is.  In  this  we  wholly  agree:  indeed,  it  is  precisely  the 
burden  of  our  introductory  chapter.  The  only  points  at 
issue  are,  whether  man  has  remained  identical  through, 
say,  the  last  sixty-seven  generations,  and  how  the  great 
change  is  to  come  about.     We  grant  that  human  groups  are 


138  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ethnocentric,  and  that  they  lack  the  historical  and  com- 
parative viewpoints.  We  grant  that  human  advance  has 
been  uneven.  We  grant,  moreover,  that  much  which  men 
have  called  progress  is  only  furbishing  up  old  institutions. 
But  we  object  to  the  methods  of  proof  in  which  Mr.  Shaw 
indulges  himself.  To  conceive  an  elderly  optimist  and  his 
opinions  multiplied  sixty-seven  times  as  the  sane  and 
rational  view  of  progress  is  merely  to  set  up  a  straw  man 
for  the  humorist's  arrows ;  it  is  really  begging  the  question. 
And  to  take  The  Republic  as  an  authentic  picture  of  real 
Greek  life  for  the  purpose  of  comparing  it  with  Ibsen's 
pathologic  tragedy  is  forgivable  only  in  a  professional 
humorist.  But  the  real  fallacy  in  Shaw's  argument  is  to 
neglect  the  quantitative  and  distributive  aspects  of  social 
amelioration.  As  we  have  already  pointed  out,  it  is  no 
proof  to  show  us  a  few  mountain  peaks  of  virtue  or  learn- 
ing in  the  past,  and  to  argue  that  there  must  have  been  a 
gradual  subsidence,  since  we  have  no  such  towering  moun- 
tains in  these  decrepit  times.  It  is  always  at  least  con- 
ceivable that  the  whole  land  level  has  risen.  The  evidence 
which  Shaw  adduces  fails  at  least  to  disprove  this  possible 
secular  rise.  Finally,  his  suggestion  of  selective  breeding 
through  some  particular  kind  of  Socialism  as  the  one  way 
to  secure  a  brand  of  human  nature  capable  of  progress  has 
nothing  solid  or  alluring  in  it :  it  is  merely  a  rehabilitation 
of  Plato  and  Nietzsche  in  the  garb  of  a  Fabian  Socialist. 
If  Shaw  had  included  selective  cultivation  and  training  of 
men  inclined  to  brotherhood  and  cooperation  in  his  scheme 
we  might  have  welcomed  the  constructive  critic  and  withal 
his  mordant  satire.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  just  this  sort  of 
selection,  through  training,  is  modestly  going  on,  and  Shaw 
himself  has  been  one  of  the  most  compelling  factors  in  the 
process.  Hence,  his  printed  doctrine  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding, he   may  be   contributing    to   a   process   of 


THE   CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  139 

advance  which  is  conceivably  going  on  about  us  at  this 
moment. 

Socialism,  too,  with  rational  sexual  selection  as  a  remedy 
for  our  present  decadence,  was  adyocated  by  Alfred  Russell 
Wallace  for  many  years,  but  nowhere  else  does  it  assume  so 
dogmatic  a  form  as  in  his  last  book.^  His  general  thesis 
is  that  we  are  not  progressing ;  that  our  whole  system  of 
society  is  rotten  from  top  to  bottom,  and  the  social  environ 
ment  as  a  whole,  in  relation  to  our  possibilities  and  our 
claims,  is  the  worst  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  He  sup 
ports  this  disconcerting  claim  with  some  ethnographic  evi- 
dence of  the  condition,  moral,  intellectual,  and  spiritual, 
of  primitive  peoples ;  but  it  must  be  noted  that  the  evi 
dence  is  far  from  convincing ;  some  of  it  indeed  is  scarcely 
short  of  the  merely  fanciful.  And  here  again  occurs  the" 
fallacy  of  citing  the  mountain  peaks  (Socrates,  Plato,  Con- 
fucius, Buddha,  other  Hindu  sages,  and  Homer)  as  proof  of 
a  high  general  level  of  well-being,  intelligence,  and  morality 
in  past  Golden  Ages.  Dr.  Wallace  draws  a  melancholy 
picture  of  infant  mortality,  suicide,  child  labor,  rotten. 
^business  methods,  gambling,  and  the  general  spirit  of  ex- 
)loitation  whicii  undoubtedly  niark  our  times.  But  he 
fails  to  add  that  the  very  refining  of  our  feelings  and 
standards  make  such  moral  aberrations  the  more  apparent, 
in  just  the  same  way  that  a  high  rate  of  certain  forms  of 
crime  may  indicate  moral  progress  through  a  keener  dis- 
crimination of  acts  injurious  to  the  majority  of  a  social 
group ;  that  is,  through  heightened  sensitiveness  in  the 
social  conscience,  hence  a  widening  area  of  possible  offenses. 
Dr.  Wallace's  argument  from   biology  and  psychology  is 

1  Social  Environment  and  Moral  Progress.  See  particularly  pp.  10-13, 
33^  45~7>  ^35j  169,  Funk  &  Wagnalls  ed.  N.  Y.,  1913.  Mrs.  John 
Martin's  Is  Mankind  Advancing?  is  similar  in  materials  and  argument, 
ending  pessimistically  in  a  plea  for  breeding  great  men,  a  discouragingly 
difficult  sort  of  eugenics. 


I40  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

scarcely  more  convincing.  He  begins  with  the  dogmatic 
separation  of  men's  character  from  their  actions.  Character 
is  inherent  and  unchangeable ;  it  is  not  cumulative ;  there 
is  no  proof  of  continuouslv  inrr^pmirig  inti^ll^rinal  <^ni^ti^np^ 
OT  rnoral  powers  in  families  or  in  the  rarp  as  a.  wh^|p;   fr> 

thexontrary  "heredity  follows  the  law  of  ' recessioii_and 
j22fHinrrify  ' '^  But,  on  the  other  hand,  character  is  sub- 
ject to  inherent  variation,  and  what  is  more  contradictory 
still,  "its  manifestations  in  conduct  can  be  modified  in  a 
very  high  degree  by  the  influence  of  public  opinion  and 
systematic  teaching."  But  these  latter  changes  are  not 
hereditary,  "and  it  follows  that  no  definite  advance  in 
morals  can  occur  in  any  race  unless  there  is  some  selective 
or  segregative  agency  at  work." 

This  whole  argument  bristles  with  inconsistencies.  How 
can  we  separate  conduct  from  character?  If  we  accept 
Dr.  Wallace's  own  definition  of  character  as  "the  aggregate 
of  mental  faculties  and  emotions  which  constitute  personal 
or  national  individuality,"  we  are  constrained  to  inquire 
if  the  motives  for  given  acts,  whether  they  come  from  in- 
herited promptings  or  social  pressure,  are  in  or  out  of  the 
mind.  If  they  are  out,  conduct  is  the  merest  topsy-turvy ; 
if  they  are  in,  they  form  a  part  of  that  aggregate  which 
constitutes  character.  Hence,  if  conduct  can  be  "modi- 
fied in  a  very  high  degree,"  it  must  be  because  motives 
for  conduct,  that  is  to  say,  character,  can  be  modified. 
But,  Wallace  would  object,  what  is  termed  conduct  or 
morality  is  not  wholly  due  to  any  inherent  perception  of 
what  is  right  or  wrong  conduct ;  it  is  to  some  extent  and 
often  very  largely  a  matter  of  convention,  local  and  tem- 
porary, not  permanently  affecting  the  character.  That  is 
to  say,  conduct  is  contingent,  but  character  is  "the  influx 
of  some  portion  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Deity,"  breathed  into 
man  eons  ago  when  man  became  man,  a  Hving  soul.    Here, 


THE   CRITERIA   OF   PROGRESS  141 

of  course,  wc  leave  the  domain  of  objective  science  and 
ascend  into  the  empyrean  of  theology.^ 

Since  it  is  preferable  to  keep  the  discussion  upon  an 
objective  plane,  it  would  be  better  to  eliminate  so  dubious 
a  term  as  moral  character  distinguished  from  social  forms 
of  conduct,  and  to  accept  such  a  contrast  as  Professor 
Graham  Wallas  makes  between  "nature"  or  "inherited 
dispositions,"  and  habits.  His  argument  is  to  the  effect 
that  habit,  while  necessary  to  social  life,  is  much  less 
stable  than  inherited  dispositions ;  hence,  variable  and  un- 
certain.- But  since  "inherited  disposition"  includes  in- 
stinct, and  since  the  moral  instinct  is  only  a  fragment  of 
that  inherited  equipment,  the  question  of  whether  the  sum 
total,  "Man's  Nature,"  with  its  complementary  forces. 
Nature  and  Nurture,  has  developed  or  not  through  the  ages 
remains  just  where  it  was.  The  whole  problem  of  mental 
inheritance  is  so  closely  bound  up  with  the  question  of  the 
inheritance  of  acquired  characters  that  an  appeal  to  his- 
tory rather  than  to  biology  or  psychology  seems  to  be  the 
only  way  to  extricate  us  from  the  tangle. 

After  all,  we  are  interested  in  men's  acts,  and  not  in 
some  assumed  absolute  inherited  character ;    and  we  can- 

^  It  must  be  remembered  that  Wallace  always  refused  to  extend  evolution 
to  the  development  of  the  human  mind ;  he  held  by  organic  evolution  only 
in  so  far  as  it  is  consistent  with  or  required  by  a  spiritual  interpretation  of 
man  and  nature.  See,  for  example,  his  TJic  World  of  Life  (191 1),  especially 
the  latter  chapters ;  or  his  essays  on  spiritualism  reprinted  in  Studies  Scien- 
tific and  Social  (1900).  But  supposing  one  grants  the  mental  and  spiritual 
influx  as  accomplished  at  one  swoop  some  time  in  the  remote  past,  is  progress 
not  conceivable  as  the  gradual  stripping  away  of  hindrances  to  man's  full 
understanding  and  appreciation  of  his  mental  and  spiritual  endowment? 
There  has  been  unquestionable  progress  in  exploiting  the  resources  of  the 
material  world.  Is  it  not  possible,  at  least,  that  the  course  of  human  history 
has  been  a  steady  progress  in  knowledge  of  the  mental  and  spiritual  resources 
that  lie  within  ourselves,  however  they  got  there?  It  would  seem  that  from 
the  theoretical  standpoint  at  least,  this  statement  of  the  case  would  relieve 
Wallace's  position  from  most  of  the  inconsistencies  which  encumber  it. 

^  See  his  The  Great  Society,  chaps,  iv-v. 


142  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

not  judge  those  acts  by  some  fancied  race  or  individual 
character  but  by  their  social  consequences.  Projecting 
the  whole  problem  on  this  plane,  then,  there  can  be  no 
quarrel  with  Dr.  Wallace's  conclusion  that  agencies  for 
social  selection  are  imperative  if  we  are  to  have  moral  im- 
provement. Of  course,  they  are  necessary.  But  the  hitch 
comes  with  his  denial  that  they  exist.  If  our  own  is  the 
worst  social  environment  ever  seen,  these  agencies  are  cer- 
tainly out  of  commission.  Yet  this  stern  critic  admits, 
that  "in  the  very  worst  of  times  there  was  an  undercurrent 
of  peaceful  labor,  art,  and  learning,  slowly  molding  nations 
towards  a  higher  state  of  civiUzation" ;  but  no  evidence  is 
disclosed  to  prove  that  such  an  undercurrent  is  not  running 
in  our  own  times.  Salvation  can  come  through  a  socialism 
that  will  enable  women  to  choose  worthy  mates,  and  will 
eliminate  automatically  the  wastrel,  the  gilded  rake,  the 
curses  of  economic  antagonism,  monopoly,  and  social  in- 
justice. The  sum  of  the  matter,  then,  according  to  Wallace, 
is  that  we  are  not  progressing,  and  cannot  progress  until  we 
actually  will  into  being  the  proper  agencies  for  selecting 
favorable  variations  of  moral  character.  One  may  reserve 
judgment  upon  his  denial  of  progress  and  his  analysis  of 
the  stigmata  of  social  degeneration,  while  still  accepting 
his  general  principle  of  creating  selective  agencies. 

At  the  risk  of  appearing  tedious  through  multiplication 
of  examples,  we  must  add  a  word  on  what  might  be  called 
the  sentimentalist  denial  of  progress.  Mr.  Wilham  Butler 
Yeats  for  instance  bewails  "this  slow  dying  of  men's  hearts 
which  we  call  progress."  Yet  there  is  not  the  slightest 
shred  of  evidence  to  show  that  men  have  lost  any  essential 
part  of  their  pristine  delicacy  of  feeling,  any  of  their  tender- 
ness, or  any  of  their  love  of  what  is  really  good  and  true. 
Others  mourn  the  loss  of  cathedral  builders,  but  forget  the 
economic  exploitation  which  they  represent.     A  past  pic- 


THE   CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS  143 

turesque  age  of  beggars  brings  a  sense  of  loss  to  those  who 
fail  to  see  that  a  new  and  healthier  art  might  be  created  in 
gladness  by  a  social  group  no  longer  oppressed  by  starva- 
tion and  superstition.  The  cross-bow,  the  caravan,  and  the 
galleon  look  charming  enough  in  the  pages  of  a  romantic 
novel,  but  were  symbols  of  an  age  of  painful  isolation  and 
narrow  ethnocentrism.  Wonderful  frescoes  and  rose  win- 
dows have  given  place  to  the  printed  page  as  the  educator 
of  the  masses.  The  sentimentahst,  if  he  is  really  serious, 
will  save  his  tears  over  the  lost  past  and  consecrate  himself 
to  evoking  an  art  equally  noble,  but  more  expressive  of 
our  own  times.  Creative  imagination,  sentiment,  and  the 
esthetic  impulse  have  never  been  lost.  They  merely  shift 
their  plane  and  seek  new  media. 


Decadence 

No  one  has  ever  yet  been  able  to  work  out  a  satisfactory 
list  of  the  marks  of  social  decadence.  Rome  fell  because 
of  paganism,  because  of  luxury,  because  of  slavery,  because 
of  impiety,  because  of  divorce,  because  of  refusal  to  accept 
Christianity,  because  of  sin,  because  of  corrupt  politics, 
because  of  race  suicide,  because  of  militarism,  because  of 
the  growth  of  the  capital  city,  because  of  land  monopoly, 
because  law  got  the  upper  hand  of  liberty,  because  of  con- 
tact with  the  orient,  because  of  Greek  learning,  because  of 
this,  because  of  that.  Every  critic  knows  why  Rome  fell 
and  warns  us  to  beware  of  Rome's  fate  by  avoiding  her  evil 
way.  And  yet,  on  top  of  all  this  explanation  it  is  not  mere 
perversity  to  suggest  that  perhaps  Rome  never  "fell." 
All  we  can  safely  affirm  is  that  if  we  are  in  possession  of 
certain  criteria  of  social  progress,  the  absence  of  certain  of 
these  marks  in  a  given  group  may  be  taken  as  an  index  of 


144  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

social  decadence.  But  group  life  is  so  complex  that  it  is 
frequently  impossible  to  say  it  is  not  going  forward  even 
when  certain  signs  hint  the  contrary.  In  citing  such  a  hst 
of  indices  of  decadence  as  that  offered  by  Dellepiane/  one 
must  be  sure  that  these  things  actually  exist  to  a  degree 
sufficient  to  characterize  the  society  and  measurably  in- 
fluence its  hfe ;  and  one  must  have  evidence  that  their  role 
is  of  increasing  importance.  Otherwise  they  may  be 
merely  incidental  and  transitional,  Hke  many  temporary 
phases,  say,  of  American  frontier  hfe. 

Because  of  its  virile  challenge,  if  for  no  other  reason,  we 
must  in  this  connection  mention  Mr.  Brooks  Adams'  no- 
table essay  on  The  Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay.  I  hope  A  \ 
no  unfairness,  except  that  of  trymg  to  condense  a  book  into 
one  paragraph,  crops  out  in  the  following  summary  of  this 
writer's  thesis.  He  assumes,  (i)  that  human  life  is  a  form 
of  solar  energy;  (2)  the  hereditary  transmission  of  rigid 
instincts  and  "  energetic  material "  ;  (3)  that  these  are  not 
modifiable ;  and  (4)  that  they  control  conduct  almost  in- 
variably. From  these  assumptions  it  follows  that  human 
character  is  not  adaptable  through  reason  or  the  mores. 
But  the  external  world  and  the  social  environment  change, 
the  latter  at  a  cumulative  rate.  Hence,  since  the  organism 
cannot  adapt  to  its  swiftly  changing  social  environment, 
the  very  swiftness  of  that  social  change  means  probable 
decay.  If  this  opposition  between  organism  and  environ- 
ment does  not  utterly  destroy  a  society,  it  is  only  because 
by  an  infusion  of  more  barbaric  blood,  a  partial  reversion 
to  an  earher,  more  energetic  human  type  is  secured.  Hence, 
the   ceaseless   oscillation   between    the   mihtary   and    the 

^  Loc.  cit.,  p.  23.  The  list  includes  :  misery,  public  and  private ;  depopula- 
tion through  malthusianism  or  emigration;  ignorance;  superstition; 
political  intolerance;  religious  fanaticism;  predominance  of  politicians; 
plutocracy;  civic  indifference;  pornography;  incivility;  misoneism, 
xenophobia. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF   PROGRESS  145 

economic  social  types,  the  ceaseless  supplanting  of  king 
and  warrior  by  capitalist,  of  art  by  business,  the  stagna- 
tion, exhaustion,  conquest,  reversion,  which  mark  the 
somersaults  from  civilization  to  barbarism  and  vice  versa. 
All  of  which  means  that  there  is  no  real  progress  but  only 
a  constant  cycle  of  revolution,  decay,  or  doubling  back. 

The  fact  of  reversion,  and  in  Mr.  Adams'  own  terms,  is 
undeniable.  But  it  is  by  no  means  universal  or  inevitable. 
The  fallacy  in  his  position  lies,  of  course,  in  the  shakiness 
of  three  out  of  the  four  assumptions.  Instincts  are  not 
nearly  so  rigid  as  he  holds,  and  are  constantly  modified  by 
social  heredity.  They  by  no  means  control  conduct  in- 
variably. To  the  contrary,  custom  is  king.  Conventions, 
mores,  beliefs,  institutions,  check  or  stimulate  our  instincts 
at  every  turn.  More  than  that,  the  process  of  selection 
goes  steadily  on,  not  only  securing  better  adaptation  to 
social  environment,  but  also,  it  may  be,  providing  resist- 
ances to  the  physical  environment.  Discrepancies  in 
societal  adaptation  occur,  as  in  modern  great  cities.  But 
it  is  quite  within  the  range  of  probability  that  human  types 
are  being  wrought  out  more  or  less  immune  to  the  strains 
and  stresses  of  our  modern  accelerated  pace,  and  at  a  de- 
creasing expenditure  of  vital  energy. 

These  criticisms  hold  to  a  certain  extent  also  of  Vacher 
de  Lapouge's  Selections  Sodales.  He  revives  the  old  theory 
of  vicious  circles  popularized  by  Machiavelh,  Vico,  Herder, 
Montesquieu,  and  others,  but  couches  his  argument  in 
eugenic  and  aristocratic  terms.  Civilization,  he  holds,  is 
Hke  a  biological  organism,  with  stages  of  growth  and  decay. 
*'Les  nations  naissent,  vivent  et  meurent  comme  des  ani- 
maux  ou  des  plantes."  The  period  of  national  develop- 
ment is  that  "where  superior  elements  multiply,  take  the 
direction  of  affairs,  and  put  on  them  the  stamp  of  their  per- 
sonal genius.  .  .  .    The  golden  age  is  the  culmination  of  eu- 


146  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

genics.  .  .  .  The  period  of  decadence  follows  the  weaken- 
ing of  the  superior  elements  and  proclaims  itself  by  the 
division  of  power  with  inferior  elements.  The  end  comes 
with  the  complete  exhaustion  of  eugenic  capital,  but  a  nation 
may  still  survive  in  this  state  so  long  as  a  shock  from  out- 
side does  not  oiver throw  the  worm-eaten  structure."  He 
beheves  that  civiHzation  leads  inevitably  to  cerebral  regres- 
sion, just  as  domesticated  animals  lose  their  native  vigor, 
and  that  since  education  can  afifect  the  individual  only,  it  is 
limited  in  influence  and  is  worth  nothing  for  race-stock  im- 
provement. Like  Rousseau  he  wails:  "The  future  is  not 
to  the  best,  at  most  to  the  mediocre.  To  the  degree  that 
civiHzation  develops,  the  advantages  of  natural  selection 
change  to  a  bitter  scourge  upon  humanity.  All  apparent 
progress  is  at  the  expense  of  capital  drawn  from  the  force 
and  energy,  from  the  will  and  intelligence,  and  this  capital 
becomes  dissipated."  Hence  progress  is  a  Utopia.^  Here 
we  encounter  anew  the  fallacy  that  superior  social  distinc- 
tion is  inherently  connected  with  superior  racial  stock. 
Moreover,  there  is  no  sound  evidence  that  'eugenic  capital' 
is  exhausted.  But  we  shall  reserve  detailed  criticism  of  this 
position  for  the  chapter  on  eugenics ;  meanwhile  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  this  argument  fails  to  take  account  of  two  factors, 
namely,  the  gradual  elimination  of  fixed  social  status  and  the 
generalizing  of  opportunity  through  which  sound  racial  stocks, 
though  socially  depressed,  may  rise  to  sturdy  expression. 

Henry  George,  while  holding  to  the  theory  of  decadence 
for  all  past  civilizations,  differs  from  the  out-and-out 
pessimists  through  offering  a,  to  him,  extremely  simple 
way  of  escape.  Not  the  pullulation  of  inferior  stocks,  nor 
coohng  of  the  sun,  nor  kings  as  such,  but  social  inequality 

^  Op.  cit.,  pp.  61,  77  ff.,  100  ff.,  118,  443,  and  ch.  15.  See  for  criticisms 
of  Lapouge  and  other  anthropo-sociologists,  Ferri,  Criminal  Sociology,  sec. 
81;  Loria,  "  L'antropologia  sociale,"  Rivisla  Moderna,  Dec,  1898. 


THE   CRITERIA  OF  PROGRESS  147 

through  land  monopoly  is  the  key  to  national  decay.  Man 
is  naturally  the  progressive  animal,  but  his  social  arrange- 
ments bar  the  path.  "What  has  destroyed  every  previous 
civiHzation  has  been  the  tendency  to  the  unequal  distri- 
bution of  wealth  and  power.  Everywhere  it  is  evident 
that  the  tendency  to  inequality,  which  is  the  necessary  re- 
sult of  material  progress  where  land  is  monopolized,  cannot 
go  much  further  without  carrying  our  civilization  into  that 
downward  path  which  is  so  easy  to  enter  and  so  hard  to 
abandon."  ^  While  in  general  accepting  the  principle  that 
gross  inequality  in  opportunity  and  in  distribution  of  re- 
wards or  power  is  the  mark  of  a  weak  society  if  not  of 
national  decadence,  yet  this  presentation  of  the  principle 
fails  to  strike  conviction ;  largely  because  it  rests  upon  two 
assumptions  which  the  author,  in  the  present  situation  of 
statistics  and  the  social  sciences  generally,  could  scarcely 
prove:  (i)  the  increasing  inequality  of  wealth;  (2)  the 
inference  that  inequality  of  wealth  means  necessarily  in- 
equality of  power  and  influence. 

On  the  whole,  then,  it  appears  to  us  that  the  existence 
of  an  inevitable  law  of  decay,  call  it  the  disease  of  civiliza- 
tion or  what  you  please,  remains  still  an  undemonstrated 
theory,  valuable  largely  because  of  its  challenge  to  senti- 
mentalism  and  complacency. 

5 

Summary 

As  the  net  result  of  all  this  discussion  we  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  an  interest  in  human  well-being  is  the  basic 
test  for  social  progress  in  any  legitimate  sense  of  the  word. 
But  this  interest  must  become  more  and  more  conscious 
and  rationalized.     It  must  not  remain  the  bovine  contented- 

^  Progress  and  Poverty,  Bk.  x,  ch.  i,  4. 


148  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

ness  of  sharing  in  a  warmer  stall  and  better  filled  manger. 
It  must  have  a  projective  aspect.  It  must  look  forward  to 
the  '  realization  of  an  ethical  order '  which  will  yield  definite 
and  coherent  guidance  and  support  to  human  effort.  It 
will  not  focus  on  increase  of  happiness  as  end  and  aim, 
for  happiness  can  never  be  more  than  the  accident  or  in- 
cident of  progress.  If  progress  has  heretofore  had  any 
purpose  at  all  it  is  the  preparation  of  mankind  for  rational 
purposive  direction  of  its  own  future  course,  the  enlarge- 
ment of  human  powers  to  fit  men  for  a  future  which  they 
only  dream  of  now  but  the  general  direction  of  which  can 
be  indicated  clearly  enough.  The  progress  of  society,  then, 
is  not  merely  moral  progress,  or  intellectual  progress,  or 
material  progress,  or  Institutional  progress ;  it  is  a  complex 
and  combination  of  all  these^and  more.  It  is  probable, 
however,  that  the  natural  order  of  these  may  be  through 
the  material  and  intellectual  to  the  moral ;  the  material 
furnishing  the  basis,  the  intellectual  and  institutional  the 
means,  working  toward  the  moral  as  the  result.^  But, 
remember,  progress  is  not  written  into  the  nature  of  things  : 
it  comes,  if  at  all,  only  as  the  fruitage  of  conscious  and 
persistent  human  effort. 

This  introductory  analysis  of  the  concept  and  criteria  of 
progress  is  admittedly  sketchy  and  general.  Likewise  its 
conclusions  tentative  and  subject  to  possible  review. 
Therefore  we  propose  next  to  examine  in  considerable  detail 
the  various  causative  factors  offered  as  determinants  or 
explanations  of  progress,  and  from  these  provisional  'inter- 
pretations' to  arrive,  if  possible,  at  sounder,  more  complete 
and  synthetic  inductions.  The  chapters  which  follow  have 
to  do  in  the  main  with  what  we  have  called  the  mass  ele- 
ment as  a  source  of  social  change. 

'See  Gunton,  Principles  of  Social  Economics,  15-17;  Ward,  Dynamic 
Sociology,  i,  461 ;  Fiske,  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  ii,  245.  Crozier, 
Civilization  and  Progress,  414. 


PART    III 

THE  PROPHETS  OF  PROGRESS 


CHAPTER  VIII 

INTRODUCTORY  NOTE  ON   INTERPRETATIONS 

OF   PROGRESS 

The  attempt  to  classify  interpretations  of  social  progress 
is  a  sufficiently  difficult  task,  for  humanity's  motives  and 
interests  are  so  complex,  so  varied,  and  intertwined  as  to 
be  almost  inextricable.  And  the  prophets  of  progress, 
although  subjectivism,  unequal  acquaintance  with  facts 
from  diverse  fields,  and  a  striving  after  simplicity  of  state- 
ment lead  them  to  propose  lopsided  formulae,  are  usually 
not  men  of  one  idea.  This  does  them  credit,  of  course,  but 
makes  it  difficult  for  us  mousing  academics  to  place  them 
in  their  appropriate  niches.  Suppose,  for  illustration,  we 
try  Professor  Sumner's  proposed  classification  of  social 
activities  and  evolution  under  the  four  heads :  self-mainte- 
nance, self -perpetuation,  self-gratification,  mental  and  social 
reactions.  It  is  evident  that  the  geographic  explanation 
of  progress  would  cut  across  all  four.  So,  to  even  a  greater 
degree,  would  the  economic  explanation ;  for  are  not 
marriage,  procreation,  amusements,  wars,  classes,  govern- 
ment, religion,  the  mores,  causally  related  to  means  of 
subsistence  ? 

Hence  the  classification  that  follows  has  not  the  slightest 
claims  to  water-tight  logic.  It  is  perhaps  pedagogic  or 
homiletic  rather  than  scientific.  It  came  by  dint  of  neces- 
sity and  looks  merely  to  clarity  and  convenience.  Classifi- 
cations Hke  treaties  are  mere  scraps  of  paper.     For  our 


152  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

purpose  the  prophets  of  progress  divide  themselves  into  the 
materialistic  (including  advocates  of  climate,  wealth,  inven- 
tion, technique  of  production  and  trade,  division  of  labor)  ; 
biologic  (champions  of  race-selection,  war,  eugenics,  popula- 
tion-growth) -;  institutional  (property,  the  family,  govern- 
ment, law,  public  opinion,  language,  religion) ;  ideologist 
(intellect,  ideals,  aesthetic  sentiments,  Hterature). 

It  is  of  course  true  that  anybody  who  has  studied  human 
progress  and  whose  mind's  door  is  the  sUghtest  ajar  is  to 
that  extent  an  eclectic.  To  that  extent  our  classification 
"does  him  injustice.  But  it  is  equally  true  that  each  of  the 
prophets  we  are  about  to  study  took  care  to  state  his  major 
position  so  strongly  that  not  infrequently  he  over-stated 
and  exaggerated,  and  in  so  far  left  no  great  uncertainty  as 
to  the  pigeon-hole  he  would  have  chosen. 

Such  marked  differences  of  emphasis  occur  within  the 
general  group  of  economic  explanations  that  they  merit 
separate  attention  before  considering  the  extreme  Left, 
namely,  the  socialists,  to  whom  indeed  the  terms  economic 
materiaHsts  or  economic  determinists  were  originally  ap- 
plied. The  technicians  or  inventionists  constitute  one  of 
these  special  groups.  Perhaps  a  word  of  explanation  is 
due  also  for  including  the  chapter  on  criticism  of  economic 
determinism.  The  chief  justification  for  it  is  that  Professor 
SeHgman's  classic  Httle  book  covers  neither  the  anthro- 
pological nor  the  psychological  angles  of  criticism. 

Under  the  general  concept  of  the  biologic  interpretation 
of  progress  I  propose  to  lump  together  such  rather  ill- 
assorted  ideas  as  natural  selection,  social  selection,  race 
conflicts,  race  migrations,  race  contacts,  war,  eugenics,  and 
growth  of  populations.  It  is  obvious  that  elements  other 
than  biological  enter  here.  This  is  inevitable,  since  we  are 
deaUng  with  life  and  history,  which  are  organic  wholes. 
But  the  various  viewpoints  lie  close  enough  together  to 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE  ON  INTERPRETATIONS       153 

warrant  uniting  them  into  a  single  aspect  of  social  evolution 
and  progress. 

Other,  even  grosser,  breaches  of  good  order  have  been 
committed.     Language,  which  is  a  fundamental  invention, 
has  been  thrown  into  the  institutional  section  because  it  is 
more  closely  related  to  society's  ideas  than  to  its  material 
equipment,  and  because  it  has  many  institutional  aspects. 
The  treasuring  of  archaic  forms  of  speech,  the  insistence 
upon  styles  and  phrases  as  marks  of  class  or  caste  culture, 
the  work  of  the  "purist":    all  these  are  distinctively  in- 
stitutional modes.     After  some  hesitation  over  the  proper 
place  for  religion  it  was  decided  to  include  it  with  institutions 
like  law,  government,  and  classes,  with  which  it  is  closely 
allied  in  function,  rather  than  alongside  of  ideaUsm,  where 
it  might  go  with  equal  propriety.     Again,  public  opinion 
can  only  by  adolescent  chivalry  be  called  a  real  social  in- 
stitution ;    yet  we  have  classed  it  as  such  because  of  its 
kinship   with   law   and   government.     Education,    though 
obviously  institutional,  has  been  given  a  separate  place 
because  of  its  relation  of  climax  to  the  whole  argument. 


MATERIALISTIC  INTERPRETATIONS 


CHAPTER  IX 

GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS 

"The  environment  transforms  the  animal,  while  man  transforms  the 
environment."     (L.  F.  Ward) 


Geographic  determinism  assumes  that  the  cosmic 
factors  in  human  environment  are  the  basic  determinants 
of  human  conduct.  Man's  body,  hence,  his  thinking,  feeUng, 
wilHng,  his  advances,  and  his  debasement  are  molded  and 
to  a  large  degree  controlled  by  climate,  fertiUty  of  soil, 
food,  altitude,  configuration  of  the  ground  and  other  aspects 
of  nature,  earthquakes,  and  other  striking  natural  phenom- 
ena. It  was  inevitable  that  modern  positivist  science 
should  at  least  forecast  some  such  conclusion.  Occa- 
sionally, even  in  classic  writers  of  antiquity,  appear  some 
more  or  less  inconclusive  passages  hinting  at  geographic 
determinism.  Aristotle  seems  to  have  ghmpsed  the  prob- 
lem. And  Plutarch,  speaking  of  differences  in  the  Athe- 
nian population,  suggests  the  influence  of  atmosphere  and 
altitude  in  accounting  for  them.  We  hear  httle  more 
of  the  theory  until  Bodin  stated  it  somewhat  broadly  at 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  But  to  Montesquieu 
and  Herder,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  is  due  credit  for 
opening  up  fully  the  problem  of  climatic  influence.  To 
them,  however,  as  to  most  earlier  writers,  climate  meant 
much  that  is  now  termed  our  whole  physical  environment. 
The  nineteenth  century  materialistic  philosophy  of  "man 

157 


IS8  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ist  was  er  isst  "  took  simply  one  element,  food,  as  typical 
of  what  we  call  cosmic  determinism.  Recent  studies  show 
a  decided  tendency  to  revive  the  rather  naive  doctrines  of 
earlier  centuries,  and  to  express  them  even  more  rigidly. 
But  the  manifest  exaggeration  in  them  will  speedily  be  ex- 
punged by  healthy  criticism,  and  a  proper  evaluation  of 
geographic  forces  reached. 


Climate 

Everybody  knows  through  experience  that  changes  in 
temperature  or  humidity  affect  human  activity.  The 
procession  of  the  seasons  marks  off  seed  time  from  harvest, 
rush  times  from  dull  times.  Extremes  of  heat  or  cold 
produce  extreme  variations  in  the  organism  exposed.  The 
cHmate  of  Cerro  de  Pasco,  Peru,  14,200  feet  above  sea 
level,  for  example,  is  so  severe  that  no  child  is  born  in  that 
city  of  14,000  people.  The  llamas,  or  native  sheep,  will 
not  bear  young  ;  even  hens  will  not  lay,  and  pure  bred  dogs 
cannot  live.^  Certain  types  of  crime  against  the  person 
seem  far  more  prevalent  in  hot  weather ;  while  crimes 
against  property  soar  in  the  cold  season.^  Prisons  and 
reformatories  report  a  notable  increase  in  offenses  against 
order  and  good  discipline  in  summer  months ;  police 
arrests  also  rise  ;  patients  in  hospitals  for  the  insane  manifest 
more  acute  mental  disturbances  and  general  restiveness; 
good  deportment  and  discipline  in  ordinary  public  schools 
grow  increasingly  hard  to  maintain  as  temperature  rises. 
Indeed  this  sort  of  "summer  complaint"  is  pretty  general 
among   children   as   well   as   among   the   institutionahzed 

^  Newbegin,  Man  and  his  Conquests  of  Nature,  131. 
^  For  statistics  and  graphs  illustrating  this  point  see  Aschaffenburg, 
Crime  and  its  Repression,  pp.  15-30. 


GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS  159 

classes.  We  must  beware,  however,  of  accepting  these 
phenomena  as  ipso  facto  proof  of  direct  cHmatic  influence 
in  every  case.  It  is  altogether  possible,  as  Tarde  points 
out,^  that  the  increase  of  crimes  against  the  person  in 
summer  months  is  due  not  to  the  direct  action  of  heat,  but 
to  the  greater  contact  of  person  with  person  permitted  by 
open  weather;  and  similarly,  the  cold  does  not  make  a; 
thief,  but  merely  makes  the  want  of  food  felt  more  keenly/ 
during  winter  months.  In  such  cases  the  direct  causes  are 
social,  and  temperature  only  a  conditioning  phenomenon. 

From  the  standpoint  of  social  activities  and  social 
structure  it  is  obvious  that  a  fairly  wide  range  of  tempera- 
ture means  a  proportionately  wide  range  of  wants,  of  oppor- 
tunities for  gratifying  variations  in  tastes  for  food,  for  rec- 
reation, and  the  like.  On  the  other  hand,  too  wide  or  too 
sudden  climatic  fluctuations  may  occasion  great  loss  through 
destroying  food,  through  making  labor  and  the  products  of 
one's  labor  uncertain ;  in  other  words,  through  forcing  man 
to  concentrate  his  efforts  upon  outwitting  nature  and  win- 
ning the  barest  necessities  of  life. 

Racial  character  or  racial  types  of  mind  are  sometimes 
attributed  to  geographic  environment.  At  least  such  types 
of  mind,  however  they  may  have  arisen,  are  conceived  to  be 
preserved  by  reason  of  the  presence  of  favorable  geography. 
Daudet  hinted  that  his  fellow  Provencals  were  constitu- 
tionally drunk  with  sunshine  and  blue  sky  ;  but  it  was  only 
a  novehst's  gibe  at  their  voluble  good  nature.  Taine  saw 
in  the  rigor  and  gloom  of  German  cHmate  the  determinant 
of  the  Germanic  mind.  Likewise  Professor  Huntington 
claims  that  in  Japan  a  certain  type  of  mind  has  been  selected 
and  preserved  by  reason  of  the  stormy  climate.^  According 
to  Miss  Semple  the  origin  of  a  people  can  be  investigated 

^  Penal  Philosophy,  sec.  61. 

^  Jour,  of  Race  Development,  2  :  256-81. 


l6o  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

and  stated  only  in  terms  of  geography,  including  climatic 
variations ;  and  in  general,  a  close  correspondence  obtains 
between  climate  and  their  temperament.^ 

But  the  anthropo-geographists  do  not  stop  with  these 
general  principles.  Details  and  illustrations  multiply. 
Miss  Semple  grows  poetic:  "Everywhere  a  cold  climate 
puts  a  steadying  hand  on  the  human  heart  and  brain.  It 
gives  an  autumn  tinge  to  Ufe.  Among  the  folk  of  warmer 
lands  eternal  spring  holds  sway."  ^  Montesquieu  was 
equally  impressionistic.  Heat,  he  said,  affects  courage, 
it  relaxes  body  and  mind.  The  people  of  warm  countries 
are  timid  hke  the  aged ;  those  of  cold  countries,  courageous 
like    the   young.     Heat   begets   laziness,    cowardice,    and 

^  induces  despotism  on  the  one  hand,  slavery  on  the  other ; 
despotic  empires  hug  the  equator.  By  way  of  contrast, 
cold  begets  love  of  Hberty;  nearly  all  the  smaller  free 
tribes  cluster  towards  the  poles.  Scandinavia  and  England 
are  thus  free  and  leaders  of  the  free.  "Slavery  always 
begins  with  slumber.  But  a  people  which  has  no  repose 
anywhere,  which  hunts  about  ceaselessly  and  finds  every 
place  uncomfortable  never  can  slumber."  ^     Cold  also  may 

y  induce  a  certain  toughness  of  hide,  literally  and  metaphori- 
cally. 

The  economic  effects  of  heat  are  stressed  by  both  Montes- 
quieu and  Buckle.  Heat  makes  lazy  men  and  laggard 
nations,  says  the  former.  The  energy  and  regularity  with 
which  labor  is  conducted  will  be  entirely  dependent  on  the 
influence  of  cHmate,  echoes  the  latter.  A  certain  degree 
of  heat,  however,  will  produce  the  same  results  as  a  certain 
degree  of  absence  of  heat !  Hence  Buckle  arrives  at  the 
conclusion  that  Sweden  and  Norway,  Spain  and  Portugal, 

^  Influences  of  Geographic  Environment,  121. 

'^  Op.  oil.,  620-1. 

3  Montesquieu,  Esprit  des  Lois,  Bk.  xiv,  ch.  2  ;  xvii,  2,  5 ;  xiv,  13. 


GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS  i6l 

though  so  different  in  other  respects,  are  all  remarkable 
for  a  certain  instability  and  fickleness  of  character.  The 
conclusion  is  unqualifiedly  absurd,  for  the  Swedes  and 
Norwegians  are  anything  but  fickle,  and  many  Portuguese 
groups  have  shown  remarkable  industry  and  thrift. 
Buckle's  general  conclusion  is  that  "of  the  two  primary 
causes  of  civilization,  the  fertihty  of  the  soil  is  the  one  which 
in  the  ancient  world  exercised  most  influence.  But  in 
European  civilization,  the  other  great  cause,  that  is  to  say, 
cHmate,  has  been  the  most  powerful."  ^ 

Heat  makes  food  easy  to  get,  for  nature  in  tropical  climes 
is  lavish.  And  man  in  such  climates  requires  less  clothing 
and  less  food  to  maintain  his  bodily  heat.  Hence  less  effort 
is  necessary  to  maintain  life.  Hence,  in  turn,  the  tendency 
to  populate  recklessly  and  without  restraint  or  calculation. 
From  this  tendency  to  overpopulation  follows  naturally  a 
supernumerary  laboring  class,  low  wages,  great  differences 
in  distribution  of  wealth,  monied  classes,  castes,  and  des- 
potism.^  In  passing  we  might  suggest  that  China  is  not 
a  tropical  country,  yet  China  is  a  stock  example  of  just 
these  phenomena.  But  probably  ancestor  worship  and 
not  climate  is  the  determining  cause  in  China.  Further- 
more, wealth  is  scarcely  more  unequally  divided  in  India 
than  in  the  United  States ;  yet  no  one  would  think  of 
referring  the  American  situation  to  high  temperature. 

A  warm  climate  inclines  to  overemphasis  on  tradition 
and  worship  of  the  past ;  hot  countries  are  static,  declares 
Montesquieu.^  Here  again  China  bobs  up  as  a  stumbling 
block,  especially  China's  educational  and  moral  systems. 
And  in  general  it  is  true  that  monotony  of  climate,  and  isola- 

^  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  chap.  ii.     But  is  the  truth  not  just  the 
reverse?     Civilization  certainly  began  in  the  ancient  world  before  agricul- 
ture was  developed  and  it  is  notorious  that  it  reached  its  greatest  heights  on 
some  of  the  leanest  soils.     Safety  was  even  more  desirable  than  soil-fertility. 
-  Buckle,  op.  ciL,  chap.  ii.  ^  L.  c,  Bk.  XIV,  chap.  4. 

M 


l62  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

tion,  either  by  natural  barriers  or  artificial  hedges  of  cus- 
tom and  taboo  upon  intercourse  with  strangers  is  more 
likely  than  mere  high  temperature  to  produce  a  static 
society  with  overemphasis  upon  the  past. 

Again,  we  are  assured,  warm  climate  tends  to  express 
^^  itself  in  mild  laws,  while  cold  induces  vigorous  and  bar- 
barous codes.  Montesquieu  attributes  the  severity  of 
Japanese  laws  to  the  barbarity  of  the  Japanese  character 
induced  by  a  rude  cHmate.  In  contrast  he  cites  the  Hindus 
to  whom  he  ascribes  tenderness  and  compassion.  Hence, 
says  he,  Hindu  legislators  have  decreed  few  penalties,  and 
these  very  light  and  these  few  not  rigorously  enforced. 
^  "Happy  cHmate,  which  engenders  frank  manners  and  pro- 
duces mild  laws!"^  On  the  other  hand  DeTocqueville 
ascribed  the  mildness  of  American  penal  laws,  not  to  climate, 
but  to  democracy.  Japan's  prison  methods  cast  our  own 
in  the  shade.  The  suttee  in  India  was  not  a  specially  mild 
custom  and  was  only  abolished  at  the  instance  of  the 
Englishman  from  his  rude  climate.  The  most  superficial 
•^  study  of  comparative  jurisprudence,  and  in  particular  the 
evolution  of  criminal  procedure,  would  establish  that  the 
rigor  of  laws  and  penalties  does  not  vary  with  latitude. 
They  are  an  affair  not  of  Geography  but  of  Culture- 
History. 

Moreover,  a  warm  climate  is  supposed  to  relax  body  and 
mind,  but  stimulate  imagination.  As  if  the  imagination 
were  something  added  to  the  mind,  like  will  or  memory ! 
Both  Montesquieu  and  Buckle  agree  here,  however. 

"Nature  which  has  given  these  peoples  (Hindus)  a  weak- 
ness which  renders  them  timid,  gave  them  also  an  imagina- 
tion so  lively  that  everything  touches  them  to  the  point 
of  excess.  This  same  delicateness  of  organization  which 
makes  them  fear  death  serves  also  to  make  them  fear  a 

1  L.  c,  Bk.  XW,  chap.  15. 


GEOGRAPHIC   DETERMINISTS  163 

thousand  things  more  than  death.  It  is  the  same  sen- 
sibiht}^  which  makes  them  flee  every  peril  and  brave 
every  peril."  ^ 

Buckle  is  less  paradoxical.  "An  imagination,  luxuriant 
even  to  disease,  runs  riot  on  every  occasion."  ^ 

Put  in  this  extreme  way  without  quahtications  such  a 
position  needs  no  specific  refutation.  Hume  in  his  Essay 
on  National  Characters  did  that  for  us  a  century  and  a  half 
ago.  One  needs  only  run  through  a  list  of  great  names, 
like  Homer,  Socrates,  Sophocles,  Plato,  .^schylus,  Lucre- 
tius, Caesar,  Pope  Gregory,  Abelard,  Dante,  Tasso,  Ariosto, 
Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Moliere,  Goethe,  Hoffman, 
Poe,  Pushkin,  Balzac,  Dickens,  Ibsen,  Bjornson,  Tolstoi, 
names  immortal  in  the  kingdom  of  the  imagination,  to 
prove  that  imagination  is  not  a  matter  of  isotherms.  It  is 
true  that  India  developed  a  richly  imaginative,  almost 
grotesque  and  exaggerated  mythology ;  but  even  admitting 
that  it  was  more  imaginative  than  Norse  mythology  — 
and  this  is  doubtful  —  we  may  be  sure  that  such  a  social 
phenomenon  involved  many  other  factors  besides  climate, 
and  in  any  event  was  rather  a  rank  "sport"  than  the  nor- 
mal flower  of  the  imagination.  The  natural  environment 
of  course  furnishes  many  suggestions  by  way  of  scenery, 
the  fierce  play  of  the  elements,  abundant  vegetable  and 
animal  life,  to  the  creative  imagination ;  but  the  situation 
parallels  the  case  of  a  genial  climate  permitting  the  play  of 
the  more  genial  qualities  in  man's  nature.  In  both  cases 
the  environment  permits  but  does  not  confer  the  results  ;^t 
conditions  but  does  not  cause.  It  may  be  true  enough  that 
the  cloudless  skies  of  Greece  inspired  Greek  poetry  and 
philosophy,  and  produced  a  type  of  national  mind  un- 
equaled  in  all  history.  But  what  of  modern  Greeks, 
Macedonians,  and  Turks  dwelling  under  those  same  skies? 
^  Esprit  des  Lois,  Bk.  XIV.,  chap.  3.  2  Qp.  cit.,  p.  76. 


/ 


164  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

One  is  reminded  of  Hegel's  outburst,  "Rede  man  nichts 
von  ionischen  Himmel,  denn  jetzt  wohnen  da  Tiirken  wo 
ehemals  Griechen  wohnten,  damit  Punctum  und  lasst 
mich  in  Frieden."  If  it  be  true  that  race  is  simply  climate, 
and  that  modern  Greece  is  debased  because  of  mixture  with 
inferior  races  from  regions  of  similar  climate,  what  becomes 
of  the  theory  ?     Is  it  not  a  vicious  circle  ?  ^ 

Religious  forms  might  with  some  show  of  plausibility 
be  held  to  follow  geographic  lines.  Thus  Catholicism 
might  go  with  the  Latin  or  Mediterranean  temper,  which 
in  turn  depends  upon  the  mild  climate  of  the  South ;  or  a 
vigorous  individualistic  Protestantism  might  grow  out  of 
only  such  hardy  climates  as  Switzerland,  Scotland,  and 
Scandinavia.  Carlyle  found  Mohammed's  character  to  be 
the  peculiar  child  of  the  desert.  And  Abercromby  worked 
out  two  maps,  one  showing  the  area  of  Mohammedanism, 
the  other  the  regions  of  Africa  and  Asia  with  a  mean  annual 
rainfall  of  less  than  ten  inches.  The  maps  proved  strikingly 
similar,  but  the  author  did  not  insist  that  they  represented 
more  than  a  rather  curious  correlation.^  The  only  connec- 
tion between  climate,  geography,  and  religion  comes  from 
the  fact  that  religion  is  a  practical  aid  in  the  solution  of 
^  life  problems,  —  food,  health,  sex,  order,  and  safety ;  and 
that  in  consequence  it  is  colored  by  local  needs  and  sur- 

^  Professor  Frederick  Starr  is  responsible  for  the  theory  that  the  composite 
population  of  America  is  being  slowly  molded  to  the  physiognomy  of  the 
aboriginal  Indian.  But  he  offers  no  sufficient  proof  for  the  inference  that  the 
climate  of  the  United  States  is  endowed  with  any  such  power.  Even  if  it 
were  demonstrated  that  we  were  acquiring  the  Indian  features,  it  would  still 
remain  to  be  proved  that  we  were  also  approaching  the  Indian  mental  type. 
And  as  our  comments  upon  Professor  Boas'  anthropological  measurements 
of  immigrants  showed,  this  latter  problem  is  the  more  significant.  Indeed 
the  whole  trend  of  present-day  thought  denies  any  important  causal  connec- 
tions between  head  form  and  mind. 

2  Abercromby,  Seas  and  Skies  in  Many  Latitudes,  42-3.  Peschel,  in  a 
famous  chapter  on  "The  Zone  of  the  Founders  of  Religion,"  was  somewhat 
more  positive  as  to  this  correlation.     See  his  Races  of  Man,  pp.  314-18. 


GEOGRAPHIC   DETERMINISTS  165 

roundings.  But  since  human  needs  follow  pretty  closely  a 
few  general  planes  it  is  evident  that  religious  forms  like- 
wise are  fairly  well  generalized  and  distributed  in  time  and 
space.  The  great  founders  of  world  religions  came  from 
the  tropical  orient,  because  civilization  had  reached  a 
higher  level  there.  But  religion  and  religious  practices  of 
enormous  significance  are  by  no  means  referable  merely  to 
the  Orient.  The  almost  universal  customs  of  totemism, 
ghost  avoidance  and  propitiation,  ancestor  worship,  in- 
dicate that  latitude,  longitude,  humidity,  or  temperature 
have  little  to  do  with  religion  as  such. 

The  presumed  connection  between  climate,  races,  and 
certain  types  of  disease  might  be  offered  as  a  proof  that 
climate  plays  a  fundamental  role  in  the  selection  of  biologi- 
cal types.  The  argument  runs  something  like  this  :  those 
stocks  that  can  resist  certain  prevalent  and  virulent  diseases 
are  selected  and  become  immune ;  certain  climates  aid  or 
hinder  this  process  of  immunity ;  therefore  climate  is  the 
decisive  factor.  Such  has  been  the  common  view,  not  only 
of  the  valetudinarian  but  also  of  the  scientist.  But,  says 
Professor  R.  D.  Ward: 

"The  old  view  concerning  the  paramount  influence  of 
chmate  upon  health  is  being  replaced  by  the  view  that 
good  hygiene  is  of  more  importance  than  climate  alone.  .  .  . 
Man  himself,  not  climate,  is  being  held  responsible  for 
the  occurrence  of  this  or  that  disease  or  epidemic,  for  its 
distribution,  and  for  the  death-rates  resulting  from  it."  ^ 

The  race  problem  (meaning  here  the  problem  of  race 
contacts,  race  collisions,  race  fusions)  varies  with  chmate. 
"The  phenomena  of  contact  differ  fundamentally  according 
to  the  climate  of  the  area  of  contact."  ^     For  example,  the 

^  Climate  Considered  Especially  in  Relation  to  Man,  217-8. 
2  A.  G.  Keller,  "A  Sociological  View  of  the  'Native  Question,'"   Yale 
Review,  November,  1903,  p.  260. 


• 


1 66  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

white  meets  the  black  at  a  disadvantage  in  the  tropics; 
there  can  be  little  question  of  amalgamation  ;  usually  some 
form  of  benevolent  guardianship  or  paternahstic  exploita- 
tion results.  The  unequal  relation  between  white  men  and 
their  tropical  women  has  long  offered  novelists  and  play- 
wrights materials  for  tragedy.  In  the  more  temperate 
zones  black  meets  white  at  an  even  greater  disadvantage, 
and  he  is  pressed  into  actual  or  industrial  slavery.  In 
those  same  regions  the  peoples  of  approximately  equal 
cultural  level  pass  easily  back  and  forth  or  fuse  without 
shock  to  either  economic  systems  or  the  mores.  Indeed, 
spontaneous  migration  usually  is  a  phenomenon  restricted 
to  temperate  zones.  It  is  not  necessary  to  conclude, 
however,  that  these  limiting  conditions  are  inherent  and 
permanent. 

Climate,  particularly  climatic  change,  indirectly  impels 
to  social  change  and  even  progress,  by  forcing  race 
migrations,  and  therefore  race  contacts,  with  probable 
cross-fertilization  of  cultures.  It  is  not  beyond  the  pale 
of  possibility  that  sudden  or  permanent  change  of  climate 
forced  Jacob  and  his  sons  to  migrate  into  Egypt.  It  is 
even  more  probable  that  climatic  changes  in  Arabia  induced 
the  Arabs  to  migrate,  and  paved  the  way  for  the  Moham- 
medan conquests.  Professor  Ellsworth  Huntington  is  the 
most  ardent  supporter  of  the  thesis  that  climate,  especially 
increasing  aridity,  is  the  great  determinant  of  race  move- 
ments, wars,  barbarian  invasions,  Dark  Ages,  and  even  of 
such  supposedly  pure  domestic  matters  as  strikes  or  pres- 
idential elections.^ 

This  theory  though  stated  repeatedly  with  almost 
apostolic  fervor  is  not  to  be  taken  without  a  grain  of  salt. 

*  The  Pulse  of  Asia,  3-6,  14-16,  312-326,  373  ff.,  etc.;  for  references  to 
his  Climate  and  Civilization  and  other  works  see  supplementary  readings; 
of.  Waitz,  Intro,  to  Anthropology,  i,  344,  Collingwood's  transl. 


GEOGRAPHIC   DETERMINISTS  167 

We  cannot  go  into  an  exhaustive  criticism  of  its  details. 
Suffice  it  to  observe  that  so  far  no  searching  examination  of 
the  theory  has  been  made.  No  large  body  of  evidence 
has  yet  been  brought  to  light  to  prove  beyond  question 
climatic  variations  of  such  intensity  nor  operating  over 
such  long  periods  as  to  produce  the  national  and  ethnic 
crises  suggested  by  Dr.  Huntington.  The  authentic  history 
of  the  barbarian  invasions  remains  yet  to  be  written  ;  when 
it  is  written,  pressure  of  population  and  other  human 
factors  will  probably  be  seen  in  higher  relief  than  changes  in 
temperature  and  rainfall.  The  examination  of  old  lake 
margins,  or  of  the  rings  of  ancient  trees,  may  yield  valid 
inductions  for  climatic  changes  provided  always  the 
observer  does  not  see  shore  lines  or  rings  just  where  they 
ought  to  be  to  fit  a  theory.  And  even  granting  a  goodly 
measure  of  importance  to  climatic  crises,  they  are  at  best 
only  indirect  influences  and  must  combine  with  other 
distinctly  social  elements  before  they  can  operate  upon  a 
people  to  cause  depopulation,  decadence,  or  migration. 


3 

Soil 

Fertility  of  the  soil  is  set  down  as  the  prime  determinant 
of  early  civilizations.  Buckle  makes  the  accumulation  of 
wealth  the  most  important  result  of  fertile  soil,  and  hence 
the  most  important  prerequisite  for  progress.  For  without 
wealth  there  is  no  leisure  and  without  leisure  no  knowledge. 
Yet  Buckle  qualifies  his  own  contention. 

"In  estimating  therefore,  the  physical  conditions  by 
which  civilization  was  originally  determined,  we  have  to 
look,  not  merely  at  the  exuberance,  but  also  at  what  may 
be  called  the  manageability  of  Nature." 


1 68  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Since  he  is  at  bottom  an  idealist,  he  insists  also  that 
although  such  civilizations  are  the  earliest,  they  are  by  no 
means  the  best  or  most  enduring,  and  that  the  only  prog- 
ress which  is  really  effective  depends  not  upon  the  bounty 
of  nature,  but  upon  the  energy  of  man.^ 

Montesquieu's  view  is  almost  antipodal  to  Buckle's. 
Goodness  of  soil,  he  contends,  leads  to  slavish  dependence. 
"Thus  government  by  One  is  most  often  found  in  fertile 
lands,  government  by  the  Many  in  those  which  are 
not.  ..."  Natural  fertihty  and  democracy  seem  thus 
irreconcilable.^  In  fact  sterility  of  soil  is  necessary  to 
develop  industry,  effort,  exertion,  and  ingenuity,  without 
which  there  can  be  no  real  progress.  Our  own  ethnog- 
rapher, Mason,  held  to  the  same  notion  in  criticizing  the 
geographists.'  Darwin,  too,  de  Molinari,  Hilgard  the  soil 
expert.  Ward  the  climatologist,  and  Cunningham  the 
economic  historian  all  agree  that  soil  fertility  and  other 
great  natural  resources  only  give  an  opportunity  for, 
but  cannot  produce  or  maintain  a  high  and  cultured  civili- 
zation.'* There  must  be  wisdom  and  power  to  direct  those 
latent  natural  energies.  But  this  wise  direction  is  attribu- 
table at  least  in  part  to  education.  It  is  precisely  what  the 
new  preachers  of  "efficiency"  are  pounding  away  at. 
"It  is  psychology,  not  soil  or  climate,"  says  Mr.  Emerson, 
"that  enables  a  man  to  raise  five  times  as  many  potatoes 
per  acre  as  the  average  of  his  state."  ^ 

1  Op.  cit.,  28,  62. 

^Op.  cit.,  Book  xviii,  chaps,  i,  3,  4. 

^  Origins  of  Invention,  20. 

*  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  i,  153 ;  de  Molinari,  The  Society  of  Tomorrow, 
137;  HilgciTd,  No.  Amer.  Rev.,  175:  314;  Ward,  C/Z/wa/e,  etc.,  233 ;  Cun- 
ningham, Western  Civilization  in  its  Economic  Aspects,  i,  39. 

^  Harrington  Emerson,  Efficieficy  as  a  Basis  for  Operation  and  Wages,  107. 


GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS  169 


Topography 

"Place  determines  work  and  work  determines  social 
organization,"  said  Frederic  Le  Play.  Configuration  of  the 
land  may  play  a  considerable  role,  particularly  in  the  ele- 
mentary stages  of  human  life.  Montesquieu  sees  in  the 
remoteness  of  the  island  an  explanation  of  the  greater 
liberty  of  island  peoples.^  Miss  Semple  finds  two  antag- 
onistic influences  at  work  in  an  island  environment ;  on 
lower  peoples  the  isolation  is  supreme,  and  tends  to  beget  a 
certain  aloofness  which  gives  them  a  peculiar  and  indelible 
national  stamp ;  with  higher  cultural  development  and 
increasing  nautical  technique  islands  tend  to  become  cul- 
ture foci  because  of  their  greater  accessibility.^  The  play 
of  these  opposing  influences  results  in  strongly  marked 
conservatism  opposing  equally  marked  radicalism,  fresh- 
ness and  vivacity  in  culture,  a  quick  and  nervous  give  and 
take  in  culture  exchanges,  rapid  fluctuations  in  population 
and  character,  differentiation  in  language,  racial  unity, 
a  certain  amount  of  pohtical  stabiHty  and  security, 
emigration,  and  intensive  agriculture.  Miss  Semple's 
chapter  on  "Island  Peoples"  is  an  excellent  discussion 
of  this  subject. 

Great  plains  are  accounted  unfavorable  to  the  early  de- 
velopment of  civilization.  For  they  are  not  only  monoto- 
nous but  they  also  postpone  the  transition  from  nomadic 
to  sedentary  life.  Petrarch  declared,  too,  that  no  flat 
country  ever  produced  poetry.  Again,  the  mountains  of 
Greece  and  Switzerland  are  presumed  to  have  elevated  the 
souls  of  their  inhabitants.  But  a  certain  bovine  content- 
ment that  goes  with  her  cowbells  and  cheese  rather  than  the 

*  Op.  ciL,  xviii,  5.  2  Qp  ^/^^  ^J2. 


lyo  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

dramatic  patriotism  of  William  Tell  seems  to  mark  modern 
Switzerland.  To  be  sure  a  varied  topography  yields  varied 
climate,  and  climatic  variations  within  moderate  limits 
may  administer  healthy  shocks  to  temper.  But  high 
altitudes  usually  thin  out  a  population ;  they  also  tend  to 
induce  a  certain  austerity  and  parsimony  in  standards  of 
living ;  emigration  must  ceaselessly  operate  to  carry  off  the 
slightest  surplus  population.  Conservatism,  clannishness, 
suspicion  toward  strangers,  superstition,  intense  individ- 
ualism, frugality,  and  a  certain  moral  inelasticity  mark  the 
mountaineer.  Most  of  these  things  are  due  to  the  natural 
isolation  of  mountainous  regions.  But  modern  trans- 
portation and  the  resultant  frequent  contacts  with  strangers 
tend  to  obliterate  these  primitive  effects  of  topography. 
Indeed  this  whole  question  of  topographical  determinism 
is  losing  most  of  its  point  owing  to  the  rapid  and  persistent 
internationalizing  of  life  and  the  incessant  extension  of 
means  of  rapid  communication.  Even  the  poles  have  lost 
their  arctic  isolation  and  succumbed  to  civilization. 


Other  aspects  of  nature  are  sometimes  held  responsible 
for  effects  in  human  affairs.  Buckle  made  much  of  earth- 
quakes in  Japan  and  southern  Europe,  and  tried  to  corre- 
late them  with  the  prevalence  of  superstition  and  artistic 
imagination.  Hence  he  declared  that  all  the  greatest 
painters  and  nearly  all  the  greatest  sculptors  modern 
Europe  has  possessed,  have  been  produced  by  the  Italian 
and  Spanish  peninsulas.^  Buckle's  critics  have  not  let 
slip  so  favorable  a  chance  to  cry  his  fallacies.  They  have 
pointed  out  errors  here  both  of  fact  and  of  inference. 
Portugal  has  not  produced  some  of  the  greatest  painters  of 

*  Op.  cit.,  p.  70. 


GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS  171 

the  world.  And  while  in  Peru  earthquakes  are  more 
common  than  in  any  other  section  of  the  world  we  have  no 
record  of  any  great  Peruvian  imaginative  literature  or  art. 
On  the  other  hand  the  Netherlands  produced  a  school  of  art 
that  rivaled  the  best  of  the  Mediterranean  painters;  yet 
the  Netherlands  are  a  most  uninspiring  stretch  of  low- 
land and  marsh,  and  worst  of  all  are  free  from  earthquakes. 
"Buckle  overlooked  the  principle  of  economic  evocation, 
which  alone  finally  accounts  for  the  development  of  sculp- 
ture in  ancient  Greece,  and  of  art  in  Renaissance  Italy. 
The  main  factor  was  the  economic  demand  of  the  church 
for  pictures,"  comments  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson,  Buckle's 
recent  editor.  In  the  Netherlands,  the  wealthy  burgher 
vied  with  the  church  as  a  patron  of  art ;  and  his  interest 
in  art  was  not  conferred  by  awe  in  the  face  of  great  land- 
scape beauty  or  of  racking  cosmic  phenomena:  trade  with 
the  orient  had  given  him  pride,  a  taste  for  rich  colors  and 
fabrics,  and  best  of  all  the  ability  to  pay.  Hence,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  the  economic  and  cultural  factors,  and  not  the 
physical,  to  which  artistic  evolution  is  referable. 


Man  as  a  Geographic  Agent 

It  is  not  mere  fancy  or  metaphor  to  say  that  man  secretes 
his  physical  environment  as  he  goes.  We  agree  that  Egyp- 
tian life  might  have  been  very  different  if  the  Nile  had  ceased 
to  rise.  But  even  the  prehistoric  settlers  in  the  Nile  valley 
handed  over  to  their  descendants  of  the  Memphite  epoch  an 
environment  very  different  from  the  one  they  had  received 
from  the  hands  of  nature.^  This  tendency  might  be  stated 
almost  in  the  form  of  a  law  :  each  progressive  nation  passes 

*  Metchnikoff,  La  civilisation  et  les  grands  fleuves,  225. 


172  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

through  a  series  of  environments  even  though  its  own  geo- 
graphical position  has  not  been  measurably  changed.^ 

While  man  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  making  rain  fall  at 
his  will,  he  is  able  to  manipulate  his  water  supply  to  make  it 
serve  his  purposes  more  adequately.  He  may  irrigate  the 
desert  or  drain  the  swamp ;  dikes,  canals,  levees,  and  wells 
illustrate  the  point.  For  examples  near  at  home,  take  the 
reclaiming  of  the  Bitter  Root  Valley  in  the  arid  Northwest, 
or  the  draining  of  California  marshes  and  tule  lands,  or  the 
lowered  rainfall  and  freshets  induced  by  reckless  deforesta- 
tion. It  is  true  that  climatologists  discount  man's  effect 
upon  his  climatic  environment.  The  point  is  still  debatable. 
Whatever  we  may  decide  as  to  man's  direct  effect  upon 
natural  chmate  he  must  be  reckoned  a  direct  geologic 
agent. 2 

It  is  true  then  that  man  is  made  by  Nature ;  and  it  is 
equally  true  that  Man  remakes  his  maker.  Buckle  himself 
admits  this  reciprocal  modification,  and  holds  that  the 
powers  of  man,  so  far  as  experience  and  analogy  can  guide 
us,  are  unlimited ;  yet  in  the  same  breath  he  places  a 
climatic  control  upon  man's  intellect.^  But  man  is  con- 
stantly discovering  means  of  nulhfying  this  climatic  control. 
The  invention  of  cold-storage,  central  heating  plants,  the 
generation  of  heat  by  water-power  electricity,  the  devices 
for  supplying  cool  air  to  modern  houses  and  ofhce  buildings 
all  indicate  that  climate  as  a  conditioning  factor  in  human 
life  is  becoming  a  more  or  less  negligible  quantity.  The  suc- 
cesses of  Colonel  Goethals  at  Panama  and  of  Peary  during 


1  See  Simon  Patten,  Theory  of  Social  Forces,  11 ;  Goldenweiser,  "Culture 
and  Environment,"  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  21  :  628-33. 

2  Professor  Marsh's  The  Earth  as  Modified  by  Human  Action  remains  still, 
in  spite  of  its  age,  one  of  the  clearest  and  most  comprehensive  discussions  of 
man  as  a  geologic  agent;  see  particularly  chap,  vi,  for  materials  bearing 
directly  upon  the  points  brought  out  in  these  paragraphs. 

^  L.  c,  pp.  II,  29,  etc. 


GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS  173 

a  series  of  winters  at  the  North  Pole  hint  that  man  may 
within  certain  Hmits  laugh  at  climate.  Perhaps  both  the 
Tropics  and  the  Poles  need  civilization  more  than  a  change 
of  climate !  The  use  of  feeding  barns  for  cattle  in  winter, 
the  subduing  of  such  pests  as  the  mosquito,  the  introduction 
of  new  plants  hke  the  Australian  salt  bush,  alfalfa,  date 
palm,  spineless  cactus,  mesembryanthemum  and  eucalyptus 
further  illustrate  abihty  to  overcome  natural  disadvantages 
of  climate. 

If  man  is  not  able  directly  to  control  his  physical  environ- 
ment he  can  do  so  indirectly  by  electing  a  new  one.  No 
other  single  factor  so  marks  man's  possibilities  of  develop- 
ment as  the  power  to  move  about  freely,  and  this  power  is 
constantly  increasing.  Modern  transportation  has  multi- 
plied the  mobility  of  man's  resources ;  it  annihilates  geo- 
graphic distance  and  modifies  the  old  determinism  of 
"favorable  location."  Transportation  plus  a  sense  of 
international  brotherhood  enables  India  to  control  an  un- 
propitious  season  or  year  by  a  call  for  aid  from  America. 
Indeed  man  seems  to  become  more  and  more  the  captain 
of  his  soul  in  the  struggle  against  dead  mechanical  cosmic 
forces.  Professor  J.  A.  Thomson,  the  distinguished  biolo- 
gist, in  a  burst  of  enthusiasm  cries : 

''Increasingly  we  find  the  organism  —  be  it  bird  or 
mammal  or  man  —  much  more  master  of  its  fate,  able  to 
select  its  own  environment  in  some  measure,  able  to  modify 
its  surroundings  as  well  as  be  modified  by  them.  As  we 
take  a  bird's  eye  view  of  the  course  of  evolution,  must  we 
not  recognize  the  gradual  emergence  of  the  free  agent?"  ^ 

In  any  event,  climate,  topography,  soil,  are  hardly  to  be 
set  down  as  "causes"  of  human  evolution  or  progress. 
They    are    merely    conditioning    phenomena.     To    quote 

^Heredity,  p.  517;  cf.  Goode,  "The  Human  Response  to  the  Physical 
Environment,"  Jour,  of  Geography,  3  :  342-3. 


174  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Professor  Small,  they  have  the  same  relation  to  human  asso- 
ciation that  the  temperature  of  a  hall  has  to  the  rendering 
of  a  symphony.^  This  is  simply  a  restatement  of  Herder's 
theory  that  climate  influences  but  does  not  compel.  "Das 
Klima  zwinget  nicht,  sondern  es  neiget."  The  native  vital 
force  {Sinnlichkeit)  of  the  race  itself  fights  and  resists  the 
influence  of  climate  except  when  the  transplanting  to  a  new 
climate  is  too  brusque.^  In  other  words,  speaking  philo- 
sophically, we  are  to  reckon  geographic  influences  as  'neces- 
sary' rather  than  as  'suflEicient'  explanations.^ 


Summary 

If  we  attempt  to  evaluate  the  influence  of  these  geo- 
graphic determinants,  we  shall  discover  that  such  things  as 
climate  and  soil  may  dominate  man  at  first.  But  only  at 
first,  while  intelligence  is  rudimentary,  science  scarcely  more 
than  crude  superstition,  social  organization  halting,  the 
arts  and  prudential  institutions  limited,  means  for  register- 
ing the  group  memory  and  group  accomplishments  feeble, 
education  and  social  inheritance  imperfect.  So  soon  as 
mental  capital  is  stored  up,  human  groups  begin  to  lay  by 
stores  of  food,  tools,  seeds,  in  other  words,  capital,  which 
free  them  from  the  grip  of  seasonal  vicissitudes.  Indeed 
man  is  only  able  to  appropriate  or  exploit  Nature  — •  that 
is,  to  release  Nature's  dominating  latent  powers  —  when 
his  intelligence  or  consciousness  of  needs  and  powers  enables 
him  to  read  into  Nature  the  meanings  he  desires.     Water- 


^  Amer.  Jour.  Sociology,  12  :  643. 

*  Ideen  zur  Philosophic  der  Geschichte  der  Menschheit,  Zweiter  Theil,  Riga 
and  Leipzig,  1785,  Bk.  I. 

'  Cf .  Wm.  James,  The  Will  to  Believe  and  Other  Essays  in  Popular  Philos- 
ophy, 237-9. 


GEOGRAPHIC  DETERMINISTS  175 

falls  or  river  currents  could  only  become  a  determining  force 
in  social  and  economic  life  when  human  intelligence  saw 
the  possibilities  hidden  in  them.  The  falls  were  falls  in 
the  aboriginal  days;  but  they  did  not  determine  in  any 
appreciable  way  the  life  of  the  American  Indian  because 
he  saw  no  economic  meaning  in  them.  Hence  intelligence 
and  the  education  of  intelligence  must  actually  be  evoked 
before  cosmic  determinism  can  operate  with  fullest  power. 
Furthermore,  man  is  attaining  domination  over  his 
environment  by  federated  activity,  by  cooperating  with  his 
fellows,  by  the  development  of  his  own  self-knowledge  and 
self-control  through  social  discipline.  Man  tames  earth  and 
air  by  taming  himself  and  yoking  his  own  will  with  that  of 
his  fellows.  This  is  preeminently  an  educational  process. 
And  it  was  only  because  educational  forces  were  more  or 
less  unconscious  and  unformulated  that  the  geographic 
environment  could  ever  have  played  so  considerable  a  role 
as  a  conditioning  factor  in  human  life. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   TECHNICIANS   OR   INVENTIONISTS 

"The  true  epic  of  our  times  is  not  "arms  and  the  man,"  but  "tools 
and  the  man,"  an  infinitely  wider  kind  of  epic  "  (Carlyle) 

This  group  of  interpreters  of  progress  includes  a  consider- 
able variety,  those  who  see  in  new  varieties  of  food,  new 
forms  of  the  technique  of  production  or  distribution  the 
real  ground  for  progress.  In  our  Southern  States  "Cotton 
is  King."  In  the  Middle  West  "Corn  is  King."  To  the 
French,  "Rubber  is  civilization  for  the  Kongo."  We  have 
already  seen  how  Buckle  laid  stress  upon  food  as  a  deter- 
minant :  rice  in  India,  dates  in  Egypt  fixed  the  social  type. 
Likewise,  McGee  and  Thomas  make  maize  the  foundation 
of  the  great  Mayan  civilization  in  Yucatan,  Chiapas,  Guate- 
mala and  Honduras.^  In  South  America  the  domestica- 
tion of  the  llama  is  accorded  equal  significance.  Eurasian 
civilization  is  due  in  no  small  part  to  its  possession  of  or 
access  to  a  greater  number  of  domesticable  animals  than 
are  found  on  other  continents.  The  social  consequences  of 
this  invention  are  almost  incalculable.  Domesticated  ani- 
mals served  for  food,  as  a  medium  of  exchange  in  redeem- 
ing captives  and  paying  fines,  and  in  religious  sacrifices. 
Moreover,  as  they  could  be  indefinitely  multiplied  in 
numbers  their  possession  opened  to  man  his  first  conception 
of  wealth.^     In  accordance  with  the  general  rule  that  inci- 

'  Prehistoric  America,  p.  30,  and  particularly  chap,  viii,  "Maize,  the  great 
Civilizer." 

2  L.  H.  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  Part  IV.,  chap.  II. 

176 


THE  TECHNICIANS  OR  INVENTIONISTS  177 

dence  of  domestic  and  political  power  follows  incidence  of 
ownership,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  domestication 
of  animals  plays  a  preponderant  role  in  the  transition 
of  domestic  organization  from  a  maternal  clan  basis 
to  that  of  the  individual  patrilineal  family  in  its  various 
forms. 

The  invention  of  agriculture  must  have  been  no  less 
significant.  For  both  agriculture  and  domesticated  herds 
—  the  substitution  of  an  artificial  for  a  natural  basis  of 
subsistence  —  established  for  man  a  sort  of  insurance 
against  the  world  of  uncertainty  and  vicissitudes  in  which 
he  lived.  So  did  the  invention  of  fire  for  cooking.  So  did 
the  various  types  of  tools  from  which  the  prehistoric 
archaeologists  deduce  their  succession  of  Ages  —  Stone, 
Copper,  Bronze,  Iron.  But  in  this  latter  instance  we  must 
remember  that  the  Ages  overlap.  Certain  peoples  use  iron 
axes  but  wooden  plows. 

From  what  we  know  of  the  'folkways '  it  is  safe  to  assume 
that  custom  usually  decides  what  particular  invention 
shall  live  to  dominate,  and  how  far.  Tradition,  for  example, 
decrees  that  sacred  fire  for  religious  purposes  shall  be  made 
in  the  old-fashioned  way  with  a  wood-borer,  even  though 
easier  ways  of  obtaining  fire  are  known  and  used  for  other 
purposes.  Ceremonial  adzes  of  polished  stone  linger  side 
by  side  with  secular  tools  of  metal  in  the  Pacific  islands. 
But  sooner  or  later  metallic  tools  drive  out  all  rivals.  From 
this  point,  rather  than  (as  Morgan  suggests)  from  the  date 
of  smelting  iron  ore,  begins  "the  accelerated  progress  of 
human  intelligence." 

By  some  curious  process  of  reasoning  it  is  often  assumed 
that  inventions  are  spontaneous  creations,  happy  accidents, 
uncaused  causes,  and  that  man  is  somehow  or  other  made 
their  beneficiaries.  But  progress  in  mechanical  technique 
is  never  a  pure  accident ;  it  is  based  on  previous  ideas  and 

N 


1 78  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

abilities.     For  example,  Mason  says  of  the  application  of 
fire  to  cooking : 

"Just  how  it  first  occurred  to  the  primitive  folk  that 
cooked  meat  would  last  longer  and  digest  more  quickly 
than  raw  meat  is  unknown.  The  ever-ready  guesser  will 
say  that  a  lucky  accident  was  the  teacher.  But  lucky 
accidents  give  no  lessons  to  those  who  are  not  already 
alert." 

Moreover,  savages  may  go  at  the  problems  of  invention 
no  less  consciously  and  definitely  than  an  Edison  or 
Maxim  or  Nobel.  Mason  says  the  Eskimo  make  invention 
a  part  of  their  sport. 

"They  go  out  to  certain  difficult  places,  and,  having 
imagined  themselves  in  certain  straits,  they  compare  notes 
as  to  what  each  one  would  do.  They  actually  make  ex- 
periments, setting  one  another  problems  in  invention."  ^ 

There  is  no  lack  of  evidence  to  show  that  such  an  inven- 
tion as  domestication  of  animals  is  a  mark  of  advanced 
culture.  Australia,  for  example,  shows  a  combination  of 
low  civilization  and  no  domestic  animals  of  importance. 
Almost  all  present-day  domestic  plants  as  well  as  animals 
originated  in  the  centers  of  ancient  civilization,  the  tem- 
perate river  regions  of  Eurasia.  Although  the  horse,  to 
take  only  a  single  example,  ranged  wild  over  Europe  in 
paleolithic  times,  paleolithic  man  had  not  the  wit  to  tame 
him, 

"No  appropriation  from  the  animal  world  becomes  con- 
sistent and  its  products  stable  until  in  the  absence  of 
exceptional  conditions,  civilization  has  attained  to  some 
degree  of  advancement."  ^ 

That  is  to  say,  nature  may  give  the  hint,  and  the  means 
for  utilizing  the  hint,  but  man  himself  through  experience 

^  Origins  of  Invention,  102,  23. 

"^  A.  G.  Keller,  unpublished  lectures  in  MSS. ;  cf .  ^dt,rtVi,  Anthropology,  io8. 


THE  TECHNICIANS  OR  INVENTIONISTS  179 

must  have  developed  sense  enough  to  take  the  hint  before 
such  resources  become  available. 

It  may  very  well  be  that  inventions  in  both  modern  and 
primitive  times  do  not  always  follow  a  strictly  syllogistic 
course  into  the  unknown  and  out  again.  It  is  altogether 
probable  that  many  an  invention  results  from  the  universal 
tendency  to  variation  and  to  our  inability  to  duplicate  the 
past  or  copy  literally  a  model.  The  slow  and  painful 
method  of  trial  and  error  accounts  better  than  rare  flashes 
of  genius  for  perhaps  all  our  fundamental  and  epoch- 
making  inventions.  For  inventions  are  group  products 
even  when  apparently  they  issue  from  the  personal  skill 
or  genius  of  the  hero,  the  great  man,  the  innovator.  Yet  I 
do  not  mean  to  disparage  the  genius.  For  in  the  truest 
sense  he  represents  the  group's  best  self,  the  group  function- 
ing at  its  highest  point  of  eflficiency.  He  is  that  variation 
in  ability  which  makes  possible  the  crystallizing  and  refining 
of  the  crude  materials  of  group  inventive  experience.  On 
that  account  and  because  national  progress  depends  to  a 
considerable  degree  upon  these  new  and  refined  inventive 
ideas,  there  is  wisdom  in  the  proposal  made  from  time  to 
time  to  endow  original  scientific  research,  the  chief  source 
of  new  technical  processes.^ 

But  the  question  inevitably  arises,  if  you  are  going  to 
endow  the  hunt  for  progressive  and  therefore  socially 
valuable  innovations,  where  will  you  draw  the  line,  and  who 
shall  decide  what  sorts  of  innovations  are  to  be  so  fostered 
and  rewarded?  Will  you  not  have  the  spectacle  of  com- 
peting groups  of  investigators  clamorous  and  self-centered  ? 
Will  not  the  spectacle  of  the  "interests"  lobbying  for  legis- 
lative favors  repeat  itself?     It  should  not  be  so  if  the  spirit 

^  See  Gore,  Scientific  Basis  of  National  Progress,  pp.  2-17,  83-4,  121,  167. 
To  Francis  Bacon  is  due  credit  for  early  stating  both  the  need  and  the 
possibility  of  progress  to  be  achieved  through  scientific  knowledge  of  natural 
conditions  crystallized  in  inventions  designed  to  ameliorate  human  conditions. 


l8o  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

and  tradition  of  real  science  prevail,  the  tradition  of  pa- 
tience, courtesy,  generosity,  self-denial  and  veracity. 

That  still  leaves  undecided  what  types  of  innovating 
thought  shall  be  included.  Let  me  set  down  a  few  of  these 
innovations  by  way  of  illustration.  Caesar  invented  the 
principle  -that  debt  should  not  carry  with  it  loss  of 
liberty.  The  Christian  church  invented  the  doctrine  of 
the  "mystic  body,"  a  tremendous  generahzation  for  social 
theory  and  practice.  The  Hebrew  prophets  originated 
worship  without  sacrifice.  The  preachers  of  justification 
by  faith  broke  down  the  fence  between  clergy  and  laity. 
St.  Benedict's  "Rule"  was  a  staggering  blow  at  the  in- 
dividualistic and  quietistic  hermit  or  anchorite.  Howard 
and  his  prison  reforms  ;  Cruikshank  with  his  Gallows-Bill ; 
Pinel  and  Tuke,  the  fathers  of  the  modern  insane  hospital ; 
Raikes,  creator  of  the  Sunday  School ;  the  Rochedale  and 
Le  Claire  groups  of  cooperators ;  Spencer,  Darwin, 
Huxley  and  other  protagonists  of  evolution  and  "the 
suspended  judgment";  or  to  take  only  one  other  example, 
the  founders  of  the  Juvenile  Court  movement  —  all  these 
were  inventors  of  the  highest  order.  But  shall  they  be 
included  in  a  scheme  for  encouraging  inventive  research  ? 
They  must  be  if  the  scheme  is  to  be  of  any  service  whatever. 
Whether  in  practice  it  should  work  along  the  lines  of  the 
Academie-Franfaise,  or  the  Royal  Academy,  or  a  Carnegie 
Hero-Fund  is  not  our  present  concern.  The  essential  is 
that  our  definition  of  invention  must  be  catholic. 

This  would  appear  to  raise  an  issue  with  Professor  Ross, 
who  includes  in  progress-making  inventions  only  geographi- 
cal, scientific,  speculative  innovations,  since,  as  he  contends, 
they  are  condition-making  and  furnish  the  foundations  of 
religious  and  moral  inventions.^  I  do  not  question  the 
popular  definition  of  man  as  the  tool-making  animal; 
^  Foundations  of  Sociology,  230  and  passim. 


THE  TECHNICIANS   OR  INVENTIONISTS  l8l 

neither  do  I  deny  a  measure  of  truth  to  the  maxim  exploited 
by  the  industrial  educationalists  to  the  effect  that  the  history 
of  man  is  the  history  of  his  tools.  I  grant  with  Bergson 
that  human  intelhgence,  in  its  original  feature,  is  the  faculty 
of  manufacturing  artificial  objects,  especially  tools  to  make 
tools,  and  of  indefinitely  varying  the  manufacture.^  I 
only  seek  to  point  out  that  man  is  more  than  a  tool-maker ; 
he  is  above  all  else  an  institution-maker.  This,  I  take  it,  is 
what  Aristotle  really  meant  by  his  term  'political  animal.' 
It  is  of  course  true  that  his  institutions  rest  on  a  basis  of 
tools ;  or  at  least  their  development  is  furthered  by  the 
economies  of  time  and  energy  effected  by  the  invention 
of  mechanical  devices.  But  without  institutions  (their 
source,  by  the  way,  is  not  mere  tool-making  intelligence)  not 
one  of  man's  primal  discoveries  would  have  been  preserved 
to  his  successors,  nor  would  any  refinement  or  development 
of  them  have  been  possible.  Selection  has  operated  not 
only  for  the  choosing  of  this  particular  tool  and  the  rejection 
of  that,  but  even  more  surely  for  the  electing  of  this  partic- 
ular brain  rather  than  some  other  because  it  can  use  and  im- 
prove the  crude  tool  delivered  to  it,  and  for  certifying  the 
institution  which  can  protect  and  preserve  both  the  tool 
and  its  user. 

Here  we  might  reiterate  our  previous  principle  that  even 
the  expression  of  human  knowledge  in  inventions  may  not 
necessarily  and  per  se  carry  with  it  progress  in  real  well- 
being.  If  materialistic  knowledge  is  power  it  is  not  wisdom. 
Man  again  and  again  has  to  be  rescued  from  the  dire  effects 
of  such  half-knowledge. 

Charles  Lamb  once  wrote  a  letter  to  his  friend  Dyer, 
which,  if  we  can  overlook  the  characteristic  snobbery  and 
rhetoric,  illustrates  admirably  the  dangers  of  unguarded 
science : 

^  Creative  Evolution,  p.  139. 


1 82  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

"Poor  Enfield  that  has  been  so  peaceable  hitherto,  has 
caught  the  inflammatory  fever ;  the  tokens  are  upon  her ; 
and  a  great  fire  was  blazing  last  night  in  the  barns  and  hay- 
stacks of  a  farmer,  about  half  a  mile  from  us.  There  is 
no  doubt  of  its  being  the  work  of  some  ill-disposed  rustic ; 
but  how  is  he  to  be  discovered?  ...  It  was  never  good 
times  in  England  since  the  poor  began  to  speculate  upon 
their  condition.  Formerly  they  jogged  on  with  as  little 
reflection  as  horses.  The  whistling  plough-man  went  cheek 
by  jowl  with  his  brother  that  neighed.  Now  the  biped 
carries  a  box  of  phosphorus  in  his  leather  breeches,  and  in 
the  dead  of  night  the  half-illuminated  beast  steals  his 
magic  potion  into  a  cleft  in  a  barn,  and  half  the  country  is 
grinning  with  new  fires.  What  a  power  to  intoxicate  his 
crude  brains,  just  muddlingly  awake  to  perceive  that  some- 
thing is  wrong  in  the  social  system  —  what  a  hellish  faculty 
above  gun-powder !  .  .  .  Think  of  a  disrespected  clod 
that  was  trod  into  earth,  that  was  nothing,  on  a  sudden  by 
damned  arts  refined  into  an  exterminating  angel,  devouring 
the  fruits  of  the  earth  and  their  growers  in  a  mass  of  fire ; 
what  a  new  existence  !  what  a  temptation  above  Lucifer's  ! 
Would  clod  be  anything  but  a  clod  if  he  could  resist  it? 
.  .  .  Alas !  can  we  ring  the  bells  backward  ?  Can  we  un- 
learn the  arts  that  pretend  to  civilize,  and  then  burn  the 
world?  There  is  a  march  of  science:  but  who  shall  beat 
the  drum  for  its  retreat?  .  .  ."  ^ 

Take  the  science  of  mechanical  invention  itself,  engineer- 
ing ;  what  is  its  function,  its  relation  to  human  welfare  and 
progress?     As  I  have  said  elsewhere, 

"Engineering  means  far  more  than  carrying  a  transit  or 
designing  a  steam  shovel,  constructing  a  new  type  of  rein- 
forced concrete  roof  or  discovering  a  new  explosive.  Mori- 
son  tells  us  that  nearly  ninety  years  ago  Tredgold  defined 
civil  engineering  as  the  art  of  directing  the  great  sources  of 
power  in  nature  for  the  use  and  convenience  of  man.  Mori- 
son  himself  insists  that  the  business  of  a  civil  engineer  is 

^  Everyman's  ed.  of  the  Letters,  vol.  ii,  288-9. 


THE  TECHNICIANS  OR  INVENTIONISTS  183 

"  to  design  the  tools  by  which  the  sources  of  power  in  nature 
are  directed  for  the  use  of  man." 

"But  what  uses,  and  for  what  man?  Precisely  because 
men  had  overlooked  these  pertinent  questions  John  Stuart 
Mill  uttered  his  famous  doleful  comment  on  the  failure  of 
machinery;  "Hitherto  it  is  questionable  if  the  mechanical 
inventions  have  made  lighter  the  day's  toil  of  any  human 
being.  They  have  enabled  a  greater  population  to  live 
the  same  life  of  drudgery  and  imprisonment,  and  an  in- 
creased number  of  manufacturers  and  others  to  make 
fortunes.  .  .  .  But  they  have  not  yet  begun  to  eflfect 
those  great  changes  in  human  destiny  which  it  is  in  their 
nature  and  in  their  futurity  to  accomplish."  And  after 
sixty  years  the  cry  is  repeated  by  an  English  economist,  who 
proclaimed  recently:  "Vain  have  been  the  strivings  of  the 
most  gifted  of  men.  The  machines  they  have  constructed 
have  but  created  a  new  race  of  machine-slaves,  and  made  it 
possible  for  an  increasing  proportion  of  civilized  men  to  live 
by  useless  work,  while  liberating  entirely  from  work,  useful 
or  useless,  a  limited  leisure  class  which  alone  enjoys  the 
fruits  of  the  earth  as  multiplied  and  harvested  by  machinery. 
.  .  .  Must  it  be  said  of  civilized  man  that  he  can  analyze 
the  light  of  Sirius  but  cannot  shelter  all  his  children  ?  — 
that  he  can  achieve  scientific  miracles  but  is  baffled  by  the 
commonplace?" 

"We  are  assured  that  not  only  is  machinery  not  neces- 
sarily progressive,  but  that  it  may  actually  condemn  to 
utter  ruin  and  degradation  thousands  of  families.  Only 
dullness  of  general  perception  and  capitalistic  inertia  or 
conservatism  hold  back  the  development  of  the  labor 
saving  devices  which  might  turn  our  whole  industrial  system 
topsy-turvy.  A  professor  of  physics  announced  recently 
that  physics  and  chemistry  might  soon  be  expected  to  pro- 
duce nitrogen  compounds  that  would  put  agriculture  out  of 
business  and  consign  us  all  to  cities.  Engineering  may  have 
similar  resources  up  its  sleeve. 

"Only  the  social  spirit  and  intelligence  warmed  with 
humanity  can  determine  whether  a  given  invention  or  art 
of  saving  shall  result  in  bane  or  blessing.  We  withhold 
matches  and  scissors  from  babes.     Perhaps  a  social  view 


184  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

of  his  profession  may  prompt  the  engineer  to  refuse  to 
launch  on  its  career  a  new  machine  which,  however  curious 
and  interesting  in  itself,  might  curse  rather  than  bless  his 
fellows.  The  Connecticut  Yankee,  with  his  wooden  nut- 
meg machine,  was  a  clever  engineer,  perhaps,  but  a  poor 
sort  of  citizen.  Machine-making  for  machinery's  sake  is 
just  as  foolish  and  unproductive  as  the  cry  of  art  for  art's 
sake.  All  the  arts  and  all  the  sciences  are  human  instru- 
ments for  human  purposes,  and  are  to  be  judged  solely  by 
the  sum  of  positive  good  they  produce  in  terms  of  human 
welfare. 

"The  same  principle  applies  equally  to  systems  of 
'scientific  management'  —  to  'efficiency  engineering.'  The 
efficiency  expert  who  fails  to  take  account  of  all  the  factors 
concerned  in  his  scheme  —  laborers,  managers,  capitalists 
—  may  construct  a  very  pretty  but  also  very  inhuman, 
very  dangerous,  and  in  the  long  run  very  uneconomical 
machine."  ^ 

While  in  no  wise  sympathizing  with  Rousseau's  extrava- 
gant claim  that  "it  is  iron  and  grain  which  have  civilized 
man  and  ruined  the  human  race,"  or  that  inventions  have 
ruined  the  race  because  of  the  surplus  of  time  and  goods 
which  they  created  and  which  were  transmuted  into  leisure 
and  new  commodities,  which  in  turn  softened  bodies  and 
minds  and  strengthened  the  tendency  toward  inequality 
which  had  already  set  in  ;  while  discarding  these  notions  as 
largely  fantastic,  it  is  still  legitimate  to  conclude  that  the 
tool,  the  invention,  brings  about  social  change  only  if 
intelligence  is  sufficiently  developed  to  grasp  its  significance 
and  to  use  it ;  and  if  popular  mores  accept  it  and  allow  it 
to  live.  It  contributes  to  real  social  progress  only  if 
accompanied  by  such  a  corresponding  gain  in  intellectual 
and  moral  vision  that  its  services  may  be  made  to  over- 
balance its  social  costs. 


1  << 


Socializing  the  Engineer,"  The  Technograph,  May,  1913,  pp.  131-3. 


CHAPTER  XI 
MONEY 

The  invention  of  metallic  money  should  be  set  down 
as  one  of  the  landmarks  in  social  evolution.  It  permitted 
the  transition  of  industrial  organization  from  a  natural  to 
a  money  or  credit  basis.  The  substitution  of  a  money  for  a 
natural  economy  released  men  from  a  variety  of  static  per- 
sonal relations  and  gave  greater  flexibiHty  to  social  organi- 
zation, by  creating  a  stable  measure  of  value  and  a  durable 
medium  of  exchange.  It  hastened  the  development  of 
economic  interdependence  and  social  individuality,  which 
are  marks  of  advancing  civilization.  In  other  words,  the 
way  was  cleared  for  division  and  specialization  of  occupation 
and  for  the  worker's  transition  from  status  to  contract.^ 
But  further  than  that,  Professor  Cunningham  bases  the 
"high  ideals"  of  the  Greek  states  and  especially  Athens 
upon  this  economic  process  : 

''It  was  possible  for  the  Athenians  to  cherish  these  high 
ideals,  because  they  had  taken  a  very  important  step  in 
economic  progress  and  had  become  habituated  to  the  regu- 
lar use  of  money."  ^ 

That  is,  money,  like  any  other  tool,  saved  time  which 
could  be  capitalized  for  other  and  presumably  higher  ends ; 
it  widened  men's  personal  relations  by  the  very  imperson- 

^  Cf.  Gunton,  Principles  of  Social  Economy,  chap,  i,  and  other  authors 
cited  in  the  list  of  supplementary  readings. 

^  Western  Civilization  in  Its  Economic  Aspects,  i.,  73. 

185 


1 86  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ality  of  money  transactions  as  compared  with  wages  or 
other  Hquidations  in  kind  (cattle  or  other  clumsy  media  of 
exchange). 

Modern  opposition  to  the  "truck  system"  of  paying 
wages  or  to  "welfare  work"  indicates  how  thoroughly  the 
impersonality  of  a  money  wage  system  appeals  to  the 
worker.  Men  do  not  want  orders  on  a  company  store  or 
payment  in  rent-checks  good  for  company  tenements; 
they  want  money  which  will  pass  where  they  want  it  to 
go;  they  realize  that  the  check  or  truck  system  spells 
subjection  and  further  exploitation.  They  resent  the  too 
obvious  paternalism  of  welfare  work  and  say  flatly  that  they 
prefer  higher  wages  to  g^innasiums,  swimming  pools,  and 
tea  rooms.  Perhaps  they  are  wrong.  Perhaps  they  ought 
to  realize  that  these  welfare  devices  are  really  well  meant 
and  not  at  all  mere  substitutes  for  wage-justice.  Perhaps 
we  should  censure  the  workpeople  of  Pullman  for  striking 
against  their  benefactor.  But  both  Shakespeare's  Lear 
and  Mr.  Pullman,  whom  Miss  Jane  Addams  calls  a  modern 
Lear,  made  the  mistake  of  using  their  resources  to  inflict 
their  own  personal  whims  upon  their  subordinates.  This 
was  an  historical  blunder  ;  both  these  kings  forgot  that  their 
people  had  climbed  beyond  a  mere  natural  economy  of  the 
patriarchal  type ;  and  Pullman's  car-builders  struck  a 
winning  blow  for  the  more  democratic  and  independent 
money-wage  system. 

But  this  explanation  of  progress  must  not  be  pushed 
too  far.  Here,  as  in  other  theories,  where  emphasis  is  laid 
on  mere  economic  technique,  the  constant  progress  of  ideas 
and  feelings  is  obscured.  A  money  economy  is  not  some 
industrial  Ding-an-sich,  but  represents  a  certain  level  of 
ideas  and  sentiments  which  really  condition  it.  It  is  not 
a  purely  technical  phenomenon,  but  implies  a  series  of  social 
institutions  —  state,    classes,    law,    moral    codes,  —  which 


MONEY  187 

in  turn  connote  a  more  or  less  highly  developed  level  of 
intelligence.^  Moreover,  nobody  can  fail  to  see  that  an 
industrial  organization  based  merely  on  money  relation- 
ships is  not  necessarily  permanent,  flexible,  or  sound.  It 
is  quite  likely  to  degenerate  into  what  Carlyle  called  the 
Cash-nexus,  a  state  of  pseudo-liberty,  of  that  impersonality 
which  thing  bears  to  thing,  but  which  robs  and  cheats  man 
of  his  humanity.  We  are  free  to  imagine  that  in  the  past 
as  in  the  present  the  characteristic  anonymity  of  money 
might  serve  equally  well  the  fool  and  the  wise  man,  Belial 
and  the  saint. 

^  Schmoller,  Grundriss  der  Volkswirtschaft,  ii,  659. 


CHAPTER  XII 
CAPITAL 

To  what  extent  may  increase  in  wealth,  in  the  form  of  pro- 
ductive capital,  be  considered  the  measure  and  the  means  of 
progress  ?  It  is  unquestionable  that  mankind  took  an  enor- 
mous inventive  stride  forward  when  our  primitive  forbears 
learned  the  art  of  saving,  of  storing  up  food,  seed,  capital,  of 
discounting  the  present  in  favor  of  the  future.  How  this 
habit  was  learned  it  is  difficult  to  say.  We  are  prone  to 
affirm  off-hand  that  experience  teaches.  But  just  what 
experience  ?  Many  of  the  North  American  Indians  within 
the  past  fifty  years  had  not  yet  learned  from  experience,  and 
sad  experience,  to  lay  up  stores  for  a  rainy  day.  In  Colonial 
New  England  only  the  most  skillful  finesse  of  the  Indian 
women  saved  the  seed  corn  from  the  heedless  bellies  of  their 
lords.  Periodic  famines  and  starvation  occur  in  many 
contemporary  retarded  peoples,  yet,  great  as  their  suffering 
is,  they  apparently  are  unable  to  put  two  and  two  together 
for  the  initial  lesson  in  the  mathematics  of  prudence.  The 
aborigines  of  Tasmania  are  a  characteristically  improvident 
race, 

"  For  although  dependent  almost  entirely  upon  their  hunt- 
ing for  subsistence,  yet  they  will  slaughter  indiscriminately, 
long  after  they  have  supplied  themselves  with  sufficient 
for  their  present  use."  ^ 

Father  Le  Jeune  related  of  the  Canadian  Indians : 

^  Roth,  Aborigines  of  Tasmania,  48. 
188 


CAPITAL  189 

"I  told  them  that  they  did  not  manage  well,  and  that  it 
would  be  better  to  reserve  these  feasts  for  future  days,  and 
in  doing  this  they  would  not  be  so  pressed  with  hunger. 
They  laughed  at  me.  'To-morrow  (they  said)  we  shall 
make  another  feast  with  what  we  shall  capture.'  Yes,  but 
more  often  they  captured  only  cold  and  wind."  ^ 

Of  course,  some  individuals  and  some  groups  must  have 
learned  prudence  and  self-restraint  or  we  should  not  be 
here  to  tell  the  tale.  Hence  we  are  not  surprised  to  find 
that  the  Wanika  of  East  Africa  consider  the  destruction  of 
a  cocoa  palm  matricide,  for  it  gives  them  food  like  a  mother. 
The  palm  was  early  protected  by  a  sort  of  inter-tribal  law. 
A  sidelight  on  the  frugality  and  farsightedness  of  the  Hopi 
is  shown  by  their  storage  of  a  reserve  supply  of  corn  for  two 
years.  The  aborigines  of  Victoria  take  great  care  of  bird 
nests,  sink  wells,  and  protect  the  natural  water  holes 
against  the  encroachments  of  animals.^  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  there  was  no  conscious  prudential  education,  and  only 
the  crudest  technical  methods  of  preserving  to-day's  surplus 
of  food  and  capital  for  to-morrow's  needs.  Only  rarely  do 
we  encounter  in  savagery  anything  that  could  be  called  a 
warehouse  or  storeroom.  But  once  they  were  devised,  and 
once  the  concept  of  saving  was  grasped  and  sanctioned  by 
the  folkways,  these  ideas,  like  any  tool,  wrought  a  wonderful 
economy  of  time  and  strength.  We  are  so  used  to  the 
pantry  or  the  corner  grocery  that  it  is  almost  inconceivable, 
unless  we  have  roughed  it  or  been  a  castaway  on  some  desert 
island,  how  large  a  share  of  one's  working  hours  can  go  into 

1  Jesuit  Relations,  vi.,  283.  Cf.  Curr,  Australian  Race,  i,  82  ;  von  Rosen- 
berg, Geelvinkbaii,  p.  88 ;  Hoffman,  on  the  Menomini  Indians,  Rep.  Atner.  Bur. 
Ethnology,  14:  287;  Turner,  on  the  Eskimo,  Rep.  Avier.  Bur.  Ethnology, 
II  :  240 ;  Niblock,  on  Haidah  Indians,  Smithsoniati  Report,  1888,  p.  277  -j  Carr, 
Mounds  of  Mississippi,  522  ;   Fothergill,  Five  Years  in  the  Sudan,  64-5. 

2  Lippert,  KuUurgeschichie,  i,  247,  249;  Rohlfs,  Afrikanischc  Reiscn,  70; 
Hough,  American  Anthropologist,  10:  35;  Smyth,  Aborigines  of  Victoria,  i, 
143. 


I  go  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  bare  process  of  satisfying  the  belly.  Let  any  one  try 
a  two  days'  diet  of  roots  or  shell-fish  or  tiny  grass  seeds, 
which  he  must  himself  dig  or  winnow,  and  he  will  soon  grasp 
the  limitations  of  a  mere  household  or  consumption  econ- 
omy. He  will  understand  Father  Baegert's  remark  on  the 
Lower  California  Indians : 

"The  time  of  these  people  is  chiefly  taken  up  by  the  search 
for  food  and  its  preparation ;  and  if  their  physical  wants 
are  supplied,  they  abandon  themselves  entirely  to  lounging, 
chattering,  and  sleep."  ^ 

We  may  admit,  I  suppose,  that  such  forms  of  wealth 
spelled  freedom  to  primitive  men  and  released  them  from 
bondage  to  the  dreadful  uncertainties  and  vicissitudes  of 
raw  nature,  without  committing  ourselves  to  the  view  that 
all  increase  of  wealth  is  an  unmixed  blessing  and  a  force  for 
progress,  or  falling  afoul  of  the  poets  and  philosophers  who 
describe  conditions  "where  wealth  accumulates  and  men 
decay."  This  will  become  evident  if  we  enumerate  some  of 
the  social  effects  o£  growth  in  wealth.  Among  the  most 
obvious  are  the  creation  of  new  social  classes,  the  breakdown 
of  birth-castes,  shifting  the  incidence  of  political  power 
from  the  military  or  noble  class  to  the  property  owners  and 
capitaHst-producers.  With  these  changes  comes  a  redistri- 
bution of  function  between  classes,  for  example,  in  the 
army  :  the  soldiers  are  now  drawn  from  the  lower  classes  to 
fight  battles  for  their  wealthy  overlords.^  New  standards 
of  morality  and  law  grow  up,  property  becomes  sacred,  and 
government  a  policeman  to  protect  property;  the  virtues 
of  order,  saving,  and  thrift  are  preached  and  lauded.  Lei- 
sure for  the  arts  is  released,  for  "conspicuous  waste"  hits 
upon   the   aesthetic   as  means  for   displaying   itself.     Mr. 

'  Nachrichten,  translated  for  Smithsonian  Report,  1863,  p.  363. 
^  See  the  expressive  cartoon  in  Life,  Dec.  14,  191 1. 


CAPITAL  1 91 

Murdle  cultivates  the  arts  by  patronizing  the  jewelers  whose 
wares  he  spreads  out  on  Mrs.  Murdle's  broad  bosom  to 
convince  all  the  world  that  he  is  a  success.  Unless  these 
vulgarities  or  excrescences  of  wealth  are  too  obvious,  re- 
ligion and  popular  philosophy  are  likely  to  be  acquiescent 
and  superficially  optimistic.^ 

It  should  be  perfectly  apparent  from  this  list  that  the 
distinction  we  made  between  social  change  and  progress  was 
valid  and  not  mere  hair  splitting.  For  many  of  the  social 
effects  of  wealth  just  noted  —  for  instance,  the  new  codes  of 
morals,  law,  and  religion  —  are  changes  which  may  or  may 
not  be  for  the  better  :  they  may  even  give  a  distinct  set-back 
to  real  social  progress.  The  generalization  that  growth  in 
wealth  is  a  social  good  requires  extensive  qualification. 
Indeed  one  is  almost  inclined  to  the  cynical  statement  of  the 
opposite  extreme,  that  "nothing  fails  like  success,"  and 
that  no  race  or  civilization  has  hitherto  been  able  to  survive 
luxury.  Job  intimated  that  it  was  a  grave  danger  to  have 
made  gold  one's  hope  or  to  have  said  to  the  fine  gold,  thou 
art  my  confidence.  Here,  of  course,  enters  once  more  the 
question  of  the  costs- of  progress.  President  Wilson  in  his 
first  inaugural  address  intimated  that  the  United  States 
has  been  paying  too  heavy  costs  for  a  too  rapid  growth  in 
wealth.  It  is  time,  he  urged,  to  slow  up  and  look  after  the 
producers  of  wealth  and  the  conditions  under  which  it  is  pro- 
duced. Achievement  is  not  progress  :  not  mere  increase  of 
wealth  but  increased  socialization  of  wealth  (well-being)  is 
desirable.  Or,  as  a  young  Progressive  puts  it,  what  the 
people  demand  is  not  a  trebled  production  of  coal,  not  more 
smoke,  not  more  ashes,  but  more  heat ;  not  a  statistical 
demonstration  of  rising  national  wealth,  but  distributed 
wealth,  more  economic  satisfactions  more  widely  distributed. ^ 

^  Cf .  Ross,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  217  S. 
2  Walter  Weyl,  The  New  Democracy,  145. 


192  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Capital  in  the  form  of  metallic  treasure  is  often  regarded 
as  a  sort  of  insurance  fund  against  the  day  of  battle. 
The  policy  of  hoarding  cash  indemnities,  as  in  the  case  of 
Prussia  after  the  war  of  1870,  has  been  frequently  and 
vigorously  challenged  as  bad  economics.  The  military 
wisdom  of  such  a  poHcy  is  perhaps  equally  questionable, 
as  two  historic  cases  seem  to  suggest : 

"Powerful  as  money  is,  it  is  not  omnipotent ;  the  treasure 
of  Darius  and  his  hordes  of  tributaries  could  not  resist 
Alexander,  and  Carthage  could  not  maintain  herself  against 
the  discipline  and  undaunted  determination  of  the  Romans. 
In  military  matters  money  may  do  much,  but  the  struggle 
really  lies  between  men."  ^ 

We  should  add,  however,  that  the  struggle  in  its  most  real 
sense  lies  between  organizations.  German  and  British 
economic  and  social  organization,  not  mere  gold  reserves, 
test  their  respective  war  strength. 

There  is  another  reason  why  wealth  taken  just  as  it 
stands  is  not  a  test  of  real  progress,  and  that  is  because 
wealth  does  not  increase  proportionately  to  increased  pro- 
ductive capacity.     Why? 

"Because,"  says  Theodor  Hertzka,  "wealth  does  not 
consist  in  what  can  be  produced,  but  in  what  is  actually 
produced :  the  actual  production,  however,  depends  not 
merely  upon  the  amount  of  productive  power,  but  also 
upon  the  extent  of  what  is  required,  not  merely  upon  the 
possible  supply,  but  also  upon  the  possible  demand :  the 
current  social  arrangements,  however,  prevent  the  demand 
from  increasing  to  the  same  extent  as  the  productive 
capacity."  ^ 

He  might  have  made  this  point  more  convincing  if  he  had 
added  that  increasing  productive  capacity  does  not  express 

^  Cunningham,  Western  Civilization,  etc.  i,  148. 
^  Freeland,  preface,  p.  xviii. 


CAPITAL  193 

itself  in  proportionate  increase  of  real  wealth  because  so 
much  creative  energy  goes  into  producing  rubbish  —  stuff 
like  Hodge's  razors,  made  to  sell  and  not  to  use  or  to  last 
—  and  extravagant  luxuries.  Such  a  disproportionate 
share  of  economic  energy  is  drained  off  into  pseudo-pro- 
ductive channels  that  one  of  the  first  steps  of  a  government 
in  the  throes  of  war  must  be  to  prohibit  such  useless  employ- 
ments, or  lay  crushing  taxes  on  luxuries.  A  glance  at 
the  English  prohibited  list  of  191 6  is  an  eye-opener. 

Another  fallacy  connecting  wealth  with  progress  remains 
to  be  disposed  of ;  namely,  that  the  organization  of  society 
for  production  of  wealth  makes  for  peace  within  and  between 
nations.  To  Herbert  Spencer  we  owe  the  familiar  theory 
that  the  normal  line  of  social  development  is  the  supplanting 
of  the  lower  militaristic  type  of  social  organization  by  the 
industrial  type,  because  industry  is  distinctly  peace-loving, 
and  because  it  requires  not  only  domestic  order,  but  also 
friendly  osmosis  between  the  nations  for  its  supplies  of  raw 
materials,  its  interchange  of  technique,  and  its  markets. 
So  far  as  this  theory  goes  it  is  sound.  But  if  the  Great  War 
and  other  wars  mean  anything,  Spencer  left  ofif  just  where 
the  real  problem  begins.  As  Professor  L.  P.  Jacks  points 
out,^  the  actual  process  of  producing  wealth  works  in  favor 
of  peace,  but  the  wealth  produced  becomes  a  stimulus  to 
war.  We  are  in  the  habit  of  considering  wealth,  whether 
personal  or  national,  as  an  insurance  fund  which  ought 
to  promote  peace  of  mind  and  contentment.  But,  just 
as  the  rich  must  rent  safe  deposit  boxes  for  their  jewels 
or  hire  plain-clothes  men  to  patrol  their  premises,  and  even 
then  are  in  constant  fear  of  being  robbed,  so  nations  with 
vast  accumulations  of  wealth,  where  wealth  getting  is  the 
approved  mode  of  acti\ity,  are  a  prey  to  fears  and  sus- 
picions, to  envy  and  cupidity.     Hence  armaments,  colonial 

^  "War  and  the  Wealth  of  Nations,"  All.  Mo.,  September,  1915. 
o 


194  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

conflicts,  dollar-diplomacy,  Welt-Politik,  and  all  the  rest  of 
it.  The  whole  horrible  sequence  seems  to  hinge  upon  the 
one  initial  blunder  of  making  production  an  end  instead  of  a 
means.  From  the  ethical  standpoint  it  is  a  misreading  of 
social  values. 

Since,  then,  wealth-producing  may  carry  with  it  not 
progress  but  actual  disintegration,  and  since  it  appears 
that  the  prime  difficulty  lies  in  too  great  concentration  of 
social  energies  upon  mere  production  for  production's  sake, 
the  way  of  wisdom  would  seem  to  lead  toward  the  pro- 
vision of  other  socially  approved  outlets  for  our  energies 
and  somewhat  broader  areas  for  expression  and  endeavor. 
Some  economists  have  already  begun  to  demand  that  more 
attention  be  given  to  the  processes  of  distribution  and  con- 
sumption of  wealth.  At  this  point  wealth  might  become  a 
sure  force  for  social  progress,  if  the  technique  of  distribution 
and  consumption  could  be  defined  in  terms  of  what  we  hold 
to  be  the  true  function  of  positive  eugenics,  namely,  the 
creation  of  social  opportunity  for  the  vast  amount  of 
potential  genius  lying  latent  in  the  masses.  Wealth  pro- 
duced and  consumed  for  such  a  purpose  would  create  a 
culture  whose  victories  would  not  spell  hatred  and  devasta- 
tion but  rather  social  solidarity  and  international  peace. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
DIVISION   OF   LABOR 

Division  of  labor  or  specialization  of  occupation  is 
frequently  accorded  a  predominant  role  in  economic  and 
social  progress.  One  writer,  indeed,  goes  so  far  as  to 
define  society  as  a  group  of  men  bound  together  by  division 
of  labor. ^  Plato,  while  making  division  of  labor  his  point 
of  departure  in  social  analysis,  clearly  indicates  the  other 
elements  in  social  life ;  and  modern  sociologists  tend  to  hold 
that  specialization  of  occupation  determines  the  character 
of  society  rather  than  actually  makes  it ;  that  is,  it  provides 
a  means  for  social  development,  but  does  not  of  itself  create 
or  insure  a  society. 

Now,  while  division  of  labor  is  part  of  the  industrial 
technique  it  is  hardly  to  be  reckoned  in  the  Hst  of  human 
inventions,  any  more  than  the  syllogism,  memory,  or  spe- 
cialized bodily  organs  and  functions  are  inventions.  Occu- 
pations are  distributed  according  to  supposed  fitness ;  in 
rudimentary  societies  according  to  very  obvious  possession 
of  special  skill.  But  the  possession  of  superior  abihty  or 
skill  is  not  the  result  of  invention  but  of  happy  variations, 
superior  endowment,  or  opportunities.  Nor  does  human 
society  arise  and  continue  merely  because  of  the  association 
of  several  differently  endowed  individuals  who  agree  to  pool 
their  specialized  talents.     Specialization  of  occupation,  let 

^  Sacher,  Gesellschaftskunde  als  Naturwissenschaft,  S.  7. 

19s 


196  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

US  repeat,  is  neither  the  occasion  of  society  nor  its  funda- 
mental fact  or  mode  of  expression.  There  may  well  be 
social  life  quite  outside  all  division  of  labor.  Social  inte- 
gration must  always  have  attained  considerable  dimensions 
before  anything  that  might  be  called  specialization  of 
occupation  sets  in.  To  take  only  a  single  illustration,  means 
of  communication  and  exchange  must  be  developed  before 
specialization  can  become  effective  or  even  worth  while. 
But  once  the  principle  begins  to  operate  it  opens  the  way  to 
an  increasingly  broad,  supple,  and  productive  industrial 
organization  within  human  groups. 

Specialization  of  occupation  is  usually  unconscious  at 
first,  and  grows  out  of  such  natural  social  divisions  as  sex 
and  age  groups.  These  elementary  distinctions  compound 
themselves  with  observed  differences  in  size,  strength, 
intelligence,  and  experience  to  produce  occupational  groups. 
Selective  experience  tends  to  pass  on  through  social  heredity 
the  lessons  in  efficiency  won  by  these  early,  almost  instinct- 
ive experiments.  One  of  the  first  of  these  lessons  was  the 
value  of  specialized  intelligence  in  production  and  prepara- 
tion of  food.  This  was  and  remained  for  ages  woman's 
field.  Women  have  contributed  to  human  progress  not 
only  by  virtue  of  their  inventions  ^  (agriculture,  textiles, 
etc.),  but  by  their  cultivation  of  routine,  regularity,  steadi- 
ness, application,  and  purposive  foresight,  qualities  at  once 
both  cause  and  result  of  specialized  occupations.  Conserv- 
atism is  as  necessary  to  social  life  as  nitrogen  is  to  the  air 
we  breathe.  This  conservation  is  the  outcome,  at  least  in 
part,  of  the  steadying  life  of  woman.  The  adventurous 
radical  element  in  social  evolution  may  be  traced  also  in 
part  to  specialization   of  occupation   by   men.     War   and 

^  See  Mason,  Woman's  Share  in  Primitive  Culture;  Lippert,  GcschicJite 
der  Familie,  31.  On  the  disciplinary  and  educative  effects  in  general  of 
occupations  see  P.  Descamps,  La  Science  Sociale,  November,  1913,  p.  39,  etc. 


DIVISION  OF  LABOR  1 97 

hunting  are  more  stimulating  than  planting  corn  or  suckling 
babies.  They  enlarge  the  area  of  mental  contact  and  break 
the  dull,  stupid  monotony  of  drudgery.  They  also  beget 
new  forms  of  discipline  and  cooperation,  valuable  for  social 
integration  and  advance.  It  has  also  been  suggested  that 
intermediate  sexual  t3^pes,  particularly  feminized  males, 
have  by  accepting  specialized  occupations  created  new 
skills  and  new  social  classes.  To  them  are  ascribed  a  con- 
siderable share  in  the  early  progress  of  religion,  art,  and 
science,  and  in  the  addition  of  the  priest,  the  diviner,  the 
prophet,  the  medicine  man,  the  artist,  the  poet  to  social 
structure.^  Hence  division  of  labor  has  stimulated  advances 
not  only  in  the  practical  arts  of  hfe  but  also  in  the  reach 
and  elaboration  of  man's  intellect  and  aesthetic  capacity. 

Moreover,  whether  due  to  favorable  environment  or  to 
special  race  aptitude,  or  otherwise,  the  principle  of  special- 
ization of  occupation  holds  as  well  between  social  groups  as 
between  individuals  and  classes  within  a  given  group.  Im 
Thurn  says  that  there  exists  among  the  Guiana  Indians  a 
rough  system  of  division  of  labor  between  the  tribes  and 
that  this  serves  not  only  the  purpose  of  supplying  all  of 
them  with  better  made  articles,  but  also  brings  the  different 
tribes  together  and  spreads  among  them  ideas  and  news  of 
general  interest.  Each  tribe  has  some  manufacture  peculiar 
to  itself,  and  its  members  visit  other  tribes,  often  hostile,  for 
the  purpose  of  exchanging  the  products  of  their  own  labor 
for  such  as  are  produced  by  the  other  tribes.  These  trading 
Indians  are  allowed  to  pass  unmolested  through  an  enemy's 
country.^  The  primitive  prototype  of  the  peddler-gossip 
is  illustrated  by  these  same  Guiana  folk. 

^  See  Edward  Carpenter,  Intermediate  Types  Among  Primitive  Folk, 
especially  chap.  iii.  The  documentary  evidence  is  of  interest  regardless  of 
whether  we  accept  the  author's  conclusions. 

2  Among  the  Indians  of  Guiana,  chap,  xiv ;  cf.  Mason,  Origins  of  Invention, 
364-S. 


198  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

''When  living  along  the  Macusi,"  says  Im  Thurn,  "I 
was  often  amused  by  a  number  of  those  Indians  rushing 
into  my  house  .  .  .  who  with  bated  breath,  half  in  joy, 
half  in  terror,  used  to  point  through  the  window  to  some 
party  of  their  enemies,  the  Arecunas,  coming  with  cotton 
balls  and  blow-pipes  for  exchange.  It  is  these  traders  who 
carry  with  them  the  latest  news."  ^ 

Such  customs  lead  easily  to  "peaceful  access"  to  sources 
of  such  common  necessities  as  flint,  salt,  water,  timber,  and 
finally  to  more  highly  generalized  peaceful  relations. 

The  principle  of  division  of  labor  is,  however,  a  principle 
of  progress  only  within  certain  limits.  In  so  far  as  it  tends 
to  fix  inequalities  of  social  status  it  is  a  source  of  weakness. 
Economic  Hterature  abounds  with  protests  against  the  loss 
of  industrial  skill  which  comes  from  reducing  the  worker  to 
a  mere  "hand"  who  must  perform  year  in  and  year  out  a 
routine  task  which  represents  only  a  tiny  fraction  of  a  com- 
plete manufacturing  process.  Much  of  the  friction  between 
labor  unions  and  employers  over  the  use  of  apprentices 
reduces  to  the  demand  of  union  men  that  apprentices  shall 
really  be  taught  the  trade  and  not  a  single  phase  of  it.^ 
Continuation  schools  are  broached,  partly  at  least,  to  over- 
come just  this  tendency  to  over-specialization  on  fragments 
of  trade  technique.  Fortunately,  also,  a  like  reaction  has 
set  in  against  over-specialization  in  scientific  research  and 
higher  education. 

But  from  another  standpoint  this  specialization  of  occu- 
pation might  easily  proceed  to  such  a  point  as  to  become  a 
positive  social  menace.  The  guilds  and  crafts  of  the  Middle 
Ages  lent  themselves  to  selfish  monopoly  and  exploitation 

*  Op.  ciL,  p.  271.  See  Federici,  Lois  dii  Progres,  ii,  146-7,  for  a  generaliza- 
tion of  such  facts  into  an  historical  law. 

2  For  an  admirable  exposition  of  the  human  costs  of  too  great  division  of 
labor  under  "Scientific  Management"  see  J.  A.  Hobson,  Work  and  Wealth, 
chap,  vi-vii. 


DIVISION  OF   LABOR  199 

of  vested  advantages.  Indeed,  it  was  the  reaction  against 
the  constricting  economic  and  social  effects  of  their  atomistic 
policy  that  led  to  their  ultimate  suppression  in  favor  of  free 
industry.  Ferrero  notes  the  same  process  in  Egypt  just 
before  the  beginning  of  our  era.  ''  The  old  and  glorious 
monarchy  of  the  Ptolemies  was  in  its  last  agony.  Division 
of  labor,  the  result  of  a  high  state  of  civilization,  had  been 
driven  so  far  in  Egypt  as  to  quench  every  spark  of  social 
and  national  unity.  Trades,  professions,  famihes,  and 
individuals  thought  solely  of  their  own  interest  and  their 
own  pleasure.  Appalling  selfishness  and  invincible  indif- 
ference to  anything  but  their  own  immediate  concerns 
isolated  social  groups  in  every  class. "^  Most  of  the  resent- 
ment of  the  citizen  towards  labor  unions  and  employers' 
associations  in  these  days  comes  from  the  recognition  of  the 
obvious  fact  that  both  are  attempting  to  exploit  their 
syndicated  advantage.  The  forgotten  third  party,  the 
unorganized  public,  is  caught  between  the  upper  and  nether 
millstones  of  this  inter-guild  warfare. 

Syndicalism,  which  to  some  minds  spells  the  end  of  this 
industrial  anarchy,  is  simply  the  principle  of  guild-exploita- 
tion raised  to  the  wth  degree,  a  dream  of  an  impossible 
social  fragmentation,  as  H.  G.  Wells  puts  it.  Even  the 
more  advanced  syndicalists  themselves  perceive  this  and 
are  getting  away  from  their  earlier  dreams  of  industry 
organized  on  the  basis  of  mutually  exclusive  trade  interests 
and  control.  For  the  slightest  shadow  of  success,  these 
exclusive  groups  would  have  to  submit  to  some  central, 
representative,  regulative  council.  But  the  fundamental 
difficulty  with  syndicalism  is  not  its  theory  of  direct  action, 
nor  the  difficulty  of  carrying  on  industry  upon  a  purely 
democratic  basis  :  its  real  difficulty  is  ethical.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Sidney  Webb,  probably  the  best  Enghsh  authorities 
^  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iii,  p.  241. 


200  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

on  modern  labor  movements,  make  this  point  very  clear: 
the  basic  fallacy  of  syndicalism  is  its  grounding  of  society 
upon  mutual  rivalry,  hostihty,  envy,  and  hatred,  instead 
of  upon  community  of  interests,  fellowship,  and  love. 
Social  reconstruction  must  proceed  not  along  lines  of  craft 
interests  but  of  community  of  service,  neighborliness,  and 
willingness  to  subordinate  oneself  to  the  welfare  of  the 
whole.^ 

No  scheme  of  industrial  reorganization  can  hope  for  the 
ghost  of  a  chance  to  succeed  if  it  does  not  show  some  pretty 
evident  promise  of  more  highly  developed  moral  values 
than  those  which  hold  under  our  present  system.  That 
vague  something  which  we  still  call  the  general  welfare,  is 
at  least  so  far  formulated  in  the  public  mind  as  to  preclude 
any  superficial  change  of  masters  and  owners  of  industry 
that  does  not  carry  with  it  an  advance  not  only  in  material, 
but  equally  in  moral  values.  We  may  safely  say,  then, 
that  progressive  division  of  labor  furnishes  the  means  for 
great  social  change;  but  whether  that  change  be  trans- 
muted into  progress  depends  upon  the  motives  of  the 
members  of  the  disparate  industrial  groups  and  upon  the 
social  control  that  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them  in  the 
direction  of  conscious  unity  for  conscious  social  ends.  In 
other  words,  it  depends  upon  the  development  of  rules  of 
the  game,  just  rules,  moral  rules,  if  you  will,  for  the  guidance 
of  members  of  these  separate  branches  and  twigs  of  industry 
in  the  conserving  of  their  mutual  interests,  and  for  the  ad- 
justment of  relations  between  the  various  branches  to  the 
end  that  the  industrial  organism  may  be  a  sound  living 
tree,  not  a  dangerous  bunch  of  rotten  branches. 

A  rational  social  polity  will,  in  short,  encourage  by  all 
legitimate  means  the  division  and  specialization  of  occupa- 

^  What  Syndicalism  Means,  published  as  a  supplement  to  The  Crusade, 
Aug.,  1912. 


DIVISION  OF  LABOR  201 

tion  so  long  as  the  process  really  results  in  division  of  labor 
and  not  divisions  of  laborers ;  that  is  to  say,  so  long  as  it 
does  not  foster  strongly  marked  castes  or  social  strata  based 
on  occupation  ;  and  so  long  as  it  holds  in  check  the  tendency 
of  tightly  organized  crafts  or  guilds  to  exploit  the  general 
public  for  their  own  particular  benefit.  But  in  no  event 
can  we  trust  social  progress  to  a  laissez-faire  policy  with 
regard  to  labor  "interests."  Only  education  and  disci- 
pline can  secure  from  them  the  fullest  advantage  to  the 
general  welfare. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION   OF   HISTORY 

It  remains  now  to  examine  the  general  doctrine  known 
as  the  economic  interpretation  of  history  and  its  bearing 
on  social  progress.  We  are  accustomed  to  meeting  this 
doctrine  in  its  extreme  form  in  socialist  propaganda.  But 
it  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  sociahsts.  A  recent 
writer  on  vocational  education  is  no  less  extreme:  "The 
evolution  of  industry  is  the  evolution  of  humanity."  In 
the  writings  of  Marx  and  Engels  we  find  the  doctrine  that 
on  the  organization  of  the  forces  of  production  depends  so- 
cial organization  in  all  its  multiplicity. 

"The  materialist  conception  of  history  starts  from  the 
proposition  that  the  production  of  the  means  to  support 
human  life,  and,  next  to  production,  the  exchange  of  things 
produced,  is  the  basis  of  all  social  structure :  that  in  every 
society  that  has  appeared  in  history,  the  manner  in  which 
wealth  is  distributed  and  society  divided  into  classes  or 
orders,  is  dependent  upon  what  is  produced,  how  it  is  pro- 
duced, and  how  the  products  are  exchanged.  From  this 
point  of  view  the  final  causes  of  all  social  changes  and 
pohtical  revolutions  are  to  be  sought,  not  in  men's  brains, 
not  in  man's  better  insight  into  eternal  truth  and  justice,  but 
in  changes  in  the  modes  of  production  and  exchange.  They 
are  to  be  sought,  not  in  the  philosophy,  but  in  the  eco- 
nomics  of  each  particular  epoch."  ^ 

^  Friedrich  Engels,  Socialism  Utopian  and  Scientific,  chaps,  ii-iii.  Cf .  for  a 
statement  of  the  same  proposition  in  almost  identical  language,  Engels' 
preface  to  the  English  translation  of  the  Communist  Manifesto,  li 

202 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY      203 

Marx  and  Engels  have  not  lacked  for  American  disciples 
to  popularize  their  doctrines.  Mr.  A.  M.  Simons,  for  in- 
stance, in  the  preface  to  his  Social  Forces  in  American 
History  says : 

"Changes  in  the  industrial  basis  of  society  —  inventions, 
new  processes,  and  combinations  and  methods  of  producing 
and  distributing  goods  —  create  new  interests  with  new 
social  classes  to  represent  them.  These  improvements  in 
the  technique  of  production  are  the  dynamic  element  that 
brings  about  what  we  call  progress  in  society."  ^ 

Perhaps,  after  the  Communist  Manifesto,  Mr.  W.  J. 
Ghent  states  as  vigorously  as  any  one  the  economic  basis  of 
morals  and  the  impotence  of  ideals  against  the  economic 
motive. 

''That  idealistic  or  spiritual  forces  are  part  of  the  causa- 
tion in  many  of  our  acts  and  behefs,  that  they  are  apparently 
the  entire  causation  in  other  acts  and  behefs,  is  not  to  be 
denied.  Nevertheless,  there  are  two  pertinent  facts  not 
to  be  lost  to  view.  First,  that  all  of  our  idealistic  or  spiritual 
conceptions  (apart  from  conceptions  of  the  supernatural) 
\iaxQ  their  origin  in  past  or  present  social  needs,  and  these 
in  turn  have  their  base  in  economic  needs ;  and,  second, 
that  everywhere  and  always  the  economic  environment 
limits  the  range  and  effect  of  the  spiritual  forces.  .  .  .  The 
prevailing  mode  of  production  determines  in  large  part 
what  is  moral  and  what  immoral,  and  the  ruling  class  are 
always  the  formulators  of  the  code."^ 

Lest  it  appear  that  these  quotations  are  the  rash  ohiter 
dicta  of  untutored  radicals  it  might  be  well  to  compare 

1  Pp.  vii,  69.  a.  G\\tni,  Mass  and  C/aj^,  pp.  22-3.  Carver  generalizes 
on  this  point  in  the  following  dogmatic  statement :  "...  the  ultimate  basis 
of  all  social  conflict  is  found  in  economic  scarcity  of  one  form  or  another  " 
{Essays  in  Social  Justice,  35  ;   this  is  also  the  substance  of  chap.  ii). 

2  Mass  and  Class,  pp.  15, 16, 17, 18-19,  29.  Cf.  for  other  socialistic  expres- 
sions of  the  same  idea  :  Loria,  The  Economic  Foundations  of  Society;  M.  H. 
Fitch,  The  Physical  Basis  of  Mind  and  Morals;  Kautsky,  Ethics  and  the 
Materialistic  Conception  of  History;  L.  Boudin,  Socialism  and  War. 


204  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

them  with  the  conclusions  of  men  recognized  as  eminently 
safe  and  sober.  "The  morals  of  men  are  more  governed 
by  their  pursuits  than  by  their  opinions,"  said  Mr.  Lecky. 
He  cites  the  Romans  as  an  example  of  how  from  their 
military  pursuits  military  mores  were  set  up  long  before  the 
introduction  of  philosophic  systems  of  morality.  Again, 
he  attempts  to  show  that  truthfulness  is  not  a  virtue  of 
nature  nor  of  education,  but  is  industrial.^  Parenthetically 
one  might  ask  Mr.  Lecky  to  explain  why  it  was  necessary 
to  have  a  special  merchant's  code  in  the  earlier  days  of 
European  business,  or  what  was  the  significance  of  the 
principle  of  caveat  emptor,  if  truthfulness  was  preeminently 
the  commercial  virtue.  At  best  business  veracity  seems 
to  be  prompted  more  by  fear  of  loss  than  by  essential  love 
of  truth. 

From  no  less  an  authority  than  the  learned  Rector  of 
the  University  of  Brussels  comes  equally  radical  doctrine. 
He  has  the  biological  bias,  but  with  Spencer's  notion  of 
social  evolution  as  an  organic  law,  combines  ideas  that 
sound  unmistakably  like  economic  determinism  : 

"It  would  not  be  rash  to  affirm  —  basing  one's  affirma- 
tion upon  acquired  inductions  and  experiments  —  that  the 
structure  and  functioning  of  every  society  are  determined 
in  general  by  the  economic  structure  and  functioning,  and 
primarily  by  the  laws  of  their  economic  circulation."  ^ 

For  at  least  half  a  century  an  economic  interpretation 
of  the  United  States  Constitution  has  been  accepted  by 
reputable  American  scholars.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  as 
early  as  1856,  announced  that  the  Constitution  was  the 
work  of  commercial  people  in  the  seaport  towns,  planters 
of  the  slave-holding  states,  officers  of  the   revolutionary 

'  History  of  European  Morals,  i.  158,  236,  145. 
^De  Greef,  Les  Lois  Sociologiques,  147. 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION   OF  HISTORY       205 

army,  and  property  holders  everywhere.^     Professor  Beard 
is  the  most  outspoken  contemporary  exponent  of  that  view. 

"No  less  an  important  person  than  Washington,"  he 
writes,  "assigned  the  satisfaction  of  the  claims  of  the  public 
creditors  as  the  chief  reason  for  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution. .  .  .  This  stubbornly  fought  battle  over  the 
Constitution  was  in  the  main  economic  in  character,  because 
the  scheme  of  government  contemplated  was  designed 
to  effect,  along  with  a  more  adequate  national  defence, 
several  commercial  and  financial  reforms  of  high  signifi- 
cance, and  at  the  same  time  to  afford  an  efficient  check 
upon  state  legislatures  that  had  shown  themselves  prone  to 
assault  acquired  property  rights,  particularly  of  personalty, 
by  means  of  paper  money  and  other  agrarian  measures.  .  .  . 
That  other  concUtions,  such  as  the  necessity  for  stronger 
national  defence,  entered  into  the  campaign  is,  of  course 
admitted,  but  with  all  due  allowances,  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  the  Constitution  was  a  product  of  a  struggle  between 
capitalistic  and  agrarian  interests." 

Professor  Beard  sees  also  in  Jeffersonian  Democracy 
merely  the  political  expression  of  the  agrarian  discontent 
with  a  government  which  was  building  up  a  moneyed 
aristocracy.  Its  supporters  came  from  the  farmers, 
smaller  tradesmen  and  mechanics.^  In  the  following 
chapter  some  critical  comment  will  be  offered  upon  the 
attempt  to  reduce  politics  to  a  mere  phase  of  economic  life ; 
but  for  the  moment  let  the  theory  stand  in  this  unabashed 
form. 

We  only  need  to  substitute  Professor  Sumner's  phrase 
*Ufe  conditions'  for  the  cruder  concept  of  'the  prevailing 
mode  of  production'  to  bring  the  dicta  of  Lecky  into  close 

*  The  Works  of  John  Adams,  vol.  i,  p.  441. 

^  C.  A.  Beard,  Economic  Origins  of  Jcfersonian  Democracy,  2-4,  466-7. 
Cf.  his  Economic  Interpretation  of  the  Constitution,  296,  etc.  See  also 
Walter  Lippman,  New  Republic,  February  19,  1916,  p.  64:  Rabbeno,  The 
American  Commercial  Policy,  292  ff. 


2o6  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

parallelism  with  the  Marxianists.  The  leading  motive  of 
Sumner's  monumental  exposition  of  the  'folkways'  is  that 
the  mores  have  followed  the  changes  in  life  conditions,  have 
reacted  on  the  current  faiths  and  philosophies,  and  produced 
ethical  notions  to  justify  the  mores  themselves.  He  de- 
clares flatly  that  we  live  in  a  war  of  two  antagonistic  ethical 
philosophies,  "the  ethical  poHcy  taught  in  the  books  and 
the  schools,  and  the  success  policy";  and  that  the  success 
policy  is  the  determinant.  In  other  words,  mankind  is 
incurably  pragmatic  (in  a  narrow  sense  of  the  word),  for 
whatever  works  is  right.  Here  again,  we  have  a  searching 
criticism  of  ideals. 

"Wilberforce,"  he  declares,  "did  not  overthrow  slavery. 
Natural  forces  reduced  to  the  service  of  man  and  the  dis- 
covery of  new  land  set  men  '  free '  from  great  labor,  and  new 
ways  suggested  new  sentiments  of  humanity  and  ethics. 
The  mores  changed  and  all  the  wider  deductions  in  them 
were  repugnant  to  slavery."  Again  :  "We  can  find  all  kinds 
of  forces  in  history  except  ethical  forces.  .  .  .  The  ethical 
forces  are  figments  of  speculation."  ^ 

Beyond  question,  self-maintenance  or  provision  for  life 
needs  was  primitive  man's  primary  interest.  But  does 
this  mean  that  things  were  not  tilings  to  the  savage,  but 
only  things-in-relation-to-his-stomach?  Is  the  food-quest 
his  first  interest?  Probably  so,  the  closer  he  approaches 
to  his  simian  ancestors.  But  even  at  these  lowly  stages 
the  claims  of  sex,  play,  and  vanity  were  scarcely  less  im- 
perious. In  the  satisfaction  of  these  desires,  which  con- 
stitute the  sum  of  early  well-being,  three  elements 
are    involved :    (i)   conquest  of  nature,   through   (2)    ap- 

^  Folkways,  pp.  166,  t,:^,  114,  163,  475-6.  Cf.  Crozier,  Civilization  and 
Progress,  386,  395,  etc.,  for  a  very  vigorous  statement  of  a  similar  thesis, 
viz.,  that  since  things  in  this  world  make  their  own  relations  and  moralities, 
the  material  and  social  conditions,  are,  if  not  the  sole  cause,  at  least  the  con- 
trolling factor  in  civilization. 


THE  ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY      207 

propriate  social  relations,  permitting  (3)  individual  culture. 
Though  the  three  orders  of  facts  are  closely  interwoven 
and  often  coterminous,  it  is  certain  that  in  primitive 
society  emphasis  was  laid  upon  the  first  two  of  these 
categories. 

Many  observers  have  made  the  mistake  of  calling  the 
savage  indifferent  and  inattentive.  Now,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  is  no  more  indifferent  than  you  or  I ;  he  is  only 
interested  in  other  things.  Father  Baegert  waxed  pathetic 
because  the  Lower  California  Indians  looked  upon  the 
"most  splendid  ecclesiastic  garments,  embroidered  with 
gold  and  silver,  with  as  much  indifference  as  though  the 
material  consisted  of  wool  and  the  galoons  of  common  flax. 
They  would  rather  see  a  piece  of  meat  than  the  rarest 
manufactures  of  Milan  and  Lyons,  and  resemble,  in  that 
respect,  a  certain  Canadian  who  had  been  in  France,  and 
remarked,  after  his  return  to  Canada,  that  nothing  in  Paris 
had  pleased  him  better  than  the  butcher-shops."  ^  Another 
missionary  writing  a  little  later  of  the  Delaware  Indians, 
says : 

"If  you  expect  them  to  value  or  admire  any  art,  it  must 
have  reference  to  hunting,  fishing,  or  fighting.  To  these 
you  may  fix  their  attention,  and  nothing  gratifies  their 
curiosity  to  a  higher  degree.  They  wish  immediately  to 
imitate  it."  ^ 

The  Polar  Eskimos  strikingly  illustrate  this  selection  of 
categories  of  well-being  and  activity.  Knud  Rasmussen  in 
his  fascinating  and  sympathetic  study  of  this  people  ob- 
serves : 

"The  harsh  natural  conditions  which  render  the  existence 
of  the  Polar  Eskimos  an  ever-ending  struggle,  quickly  teach 

^  Nachrichten,  p.  378. 

2  Loskiel,  History  of  the  Mission  of  the  United  Brethren  among  the  Indians 
in  North  America,  82 ;  cf.  Crantz,  History  of  Greenland  (London,  1 767),  i,  135. 


2o8  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

them  to  view  life  from  its  practical  side :  in  order  to  live, 
I  need,  first  and  foremost,  food.  ...  All  his  thoughts  are 
thus  centered  on  hunting  expeditions,  seal-catching,  fishing, 
food.  Beyond  this,  thought  is  as  a  rule  associated  with 
care.  Once,  when  out  hunting,  I  asked  an  Eskimo  who 
seemed  to  be  plunged  in  reflection,  ''What  are  you  standing 
there  thinking  about?"  He  laughed  at  my  question,  and 
said  :  "  Oh  !  it  is  only  you  white  men  who  go  in  so  much  for 
thinking ;  up  here  we  only  think  of  our  flesh-pots  and  of 
whether  we  have  enough  or  not  for  the  long  Dark  of  the 
winter.  If  we  have  meat  enough,  then  there  is  no  need 
to  think.  I  have  meat  and  to  spare  ! "  I  saw  that  I  had 
insulted  him  by  crediting  him  with  thought.  On  another 
occasion  I  asked  an  unusually  intelligent  Eskimo,  Panigpak, 
who  had  taken  part  in  Peary's  last  North  Polar  Expedition  : 
"  Tell  me,  what  do  you  suppose  was  the  object  of  all 
your  exertions  ?  What  did  you  think  when  you  saw  the  land 
disappear  behind  you,  and  you  found  yourself  out  on 
drifting  ice-floes?"  "Think?"  said  Panigpak  astonished, 
''  I  did  not  need  to  think :  Peary  did  that ! "  "  ^ 

Savage  notions  of  the  "other  world"  furnish  further 
evidence  that  no  small  part  of  the  primitive  Man's  universe 
revolved  around  his  belly  as  an  axis.  Into  his  heaven  went 
none  of  the  finer  ethical  values,  and  only  whatever  of  crude 
morality  was  carried  over  from  the  folkways  of  this  world. 
However  much  idealization  crept  in,  it  was  almost  without 
exception  couched  in  material  terms.  The  spirit  world  of 
the  Tuscarora  Indian,  for  example,  "lies  a  great  way  off 
in  this  world  which  the  sun  visits  in  his  ordinary  course." 
There  the  Indian  expects  to  have  "the  enjoyment  of  hand- 
some young  women,  great  store  of  deer  to  hunt,  never  meet 
with  hunger,  cold,  or  fatigue,  but  everything  to  answer  his 
expectation  and  desire."  This  is  their  'heaven';  but  "for 
those  Indians  that  are  lazy,  thievish  among  themselves, 
bad  hunters,  and  no  warriors,  nor  of  much  use  to  the  nation, 

^  Tlte  People  of  the  Polar  North,  1 17-18. 


THE   ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION   OE  HISTORY      209 

to  such  they  allot,  in  the  next  world,  hunger,  cold, 
troubles,  old  ugly  women  for  their  companions,  with 
snakes  and  all  sorts  of  nasty  victuals  to  feed  on."  ^  The 
Heaven  of  the  Greenlanders  is  perhaps  even  a  more 
perfect  case  in  point. ^ 

The  range  of  primitive  life-interests  strikes  us  moderns 
as  pathetically  narrow,  and  the  early  struggle  for  existence 
as  painful  and  stultifying  in  the  extreme.  Yet  from  that 
very  concentration  of  effort  upon  the  food-quest  have  come 
part  at  least  of  present  day  institutions  and  virtues.  Not 
all,  as  we  shall  see,  but  some.  It  worked  at  least  in  two 
significant  ways.  First,  it  selected  individuals  of  superior 
intelligence  and  became  in  turn  a  great  stimulus  to  mental 
development.  There  would  seem  to  have  been  a  sort  of 
'  rent  of  ability'  even  in  remote  ages,  and  this  rent  of  ability 
was  capitalized  for  group  welfare.  Second,  it  wrought 
social  coherence.  We  noted  in  discussing  the  primitive 
sense  of  personality  how  the  individual  was  subordinated 
to  the  group.  Hence  it  will  not  do  to  over-emphasize  the 
role  of  the  highly  endowed  individual  in  the  primitive 
struggle  for  existence.  Sumner  hits  much  nearer  the  truth 
in  his  demonstration  of  how  this  struggle  forced  social 
organization  through  cooperation,  a  vastly  more  significant 
element  in  human  progress.^  It  matters  little  that  he  called 
this  form  of  organization  'antagonistic  cooperation.'  The 
point  remains  that  there  was  organization,  that  it  proceeded 
from  the  exigencies  of  the  food-quest,  and  that  it  made 
possible  such  a  control  of  nature  as  would  provide  the  muni- 
tions for  struggle  up  to  a  higher  plane.  To  be  sure  other 
primary  impulses  to  social  organization  existed  from  the 
beginning.     Ties  of  blood  and  family,  associations  for  war 

^  John  Lawson,  History  of  North  Carolina  (London,  1714),  295., 
^  Crantz,  History  of  Greenland,  I,  201. 
^Folkways,  16. 


2IO  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

and  peace  and  for  control  of  other-worldly  powers 
loom  prominent.  From  them  we  derive  the  cult  of 
the  gods,  custom,  education,  art,  medicine,  and  the 
institutions  of  law,  morals  and  religion.  Yet  all  these 
institutions  affect  and  are  affected  in  return  by  economic 
exigencies. 

The  development  of  human  marriage  and  the  family  still 
further  illustrates  the  economic  basis  of  social  life  and  insti- 
tutions. The  family,  as  I  have  shown  elsewhere,  is  a 
strictly  pragmatic  institution  both  in  origin  and  develop- 
ment.   It  is  rooted  in  physiology,  economics,  and  the  mores. 

''Its  origin  was  prosaic  enough.  ...  It  was  simply 
and  solely  an  improved  bread-winning  and  breeding  device, 
whereby  man  might  increase  his  brain  capacity  through 
economic  leisure.  ...  Its  origin  is  to  be  found  in  the 
necessities  of  infancy  and  the  food-quest  rather  than  in 
the  pleasures  of  marital  companionship.  Love  played 
little  or  no  part  in  it.  Its  forms  and  above  all  its  duration 
are  to  be  ascribed  to  other  contingencies,  notably  property, 
or  force  on  the  part  of  the  male."  ^ 

On  the  island  of  Timor  the  word  for  marriage  is  haafoli, 
which  means  to  buy  something.  Practically  all  savage 
peoples  pass  through  the  stage  of  wife  purchase.  And  there 
is  considerable  evidence  to  show  that  the  very  obvious 
mercantilism  connected  with  international  exchanges  of 
fortunes  for  titles  is  not  altogether  unknown  in  the  middle 
and  lower  classes.  But  apart  from  this,  statistics  show  a 
rather  remarkable  correlation  between  marriage  rates  and 
such  economic  phenomena  as  the  price  of  grain  and  other 
staples,  the  totals  of  export  and  import  trade,  crises,  and 

■  ^  The  Primitive  Family  as  an  Educational  Agency,  pp.  ii,  18-22,  140,  etc. 
Cf.  Ernst  Grosse,  Die  Formen  der  Familie  und  die  Formen  der  Wirtschaft. 
This  study  is  the  most  elaborate  and  uncompromising  exposition  of  economic 
determinism  in  the  field  of  domestic  institutions.  But  the  reader  should  be 
on  guard  against  numerous  over-statements  and  strained  deductions. 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION  OF   HISTORY      211 

industrial  depression.  Indeed,  Dr.  Farr  called  marriage 
rates  the  "barometer  of  national  prosperity."  ^ 

The  dependence  of  education  upon  industrialism  may  be 
taken  as  a  final  illustration  of  the  economic  thesis.  We  have 
already  shown  how  the  storing  up  of  capital  and  the  inven- 
tion of  a  money  economy  released  a  certain  amount  of  leisure 
which  might  be  apphed  to  cultural  ends.  We  might  put 
the  case  much  more  strongly.  The  transition  from  a  mere 
consumption  or  hand-to-mouth  economy  to  an  economy  of 
production  for  exchange  and  trade  revolutionizes  education. 
We  could  hardly  be  charged  with  overstatement  if  we  said 
that  education  lags  behind  the  march  of  commerce  and 
industry.  Industry,  commerce,  and  religion  are  organized 
on  a  world  scale,  but  only  the  faintest  attempts  have  been 
made  to  do  so  with  education.  Universal  race  congresses, 
international  conferences  on  science,  hygiene,  social  welfare, 
etc.,  and  international  exchanges  of  professors  and  students 
are  only  crude  beginnings. 

While  it  is  true  that  education  helped  to  bring  about  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  it  is  equally  true  that  the  Industrial 
Revolution  with  its  staggering  gains  in  productive  power,  its 
heaping  up  of  capital  and  consumable  goods,  its  develop- 
ment of  cities  and  its  demand  for  more  intelligent  labor, 
has  furthered  the  progress  of  education.  Out  of  this  indus- 
trial commotion  has  come  social  progress  along  two  lines ; 
namely,  conservation  of  the  worker  through  sanitary  meas- 
ures (including  restraints  upon  the  labor  of  children  and 
women) ;  and  the  beginnings  of  a  definite  system  of  na- 
tional, universal  primary  education.  The  one  aims  to 
prolong  the  laborer's  life,  the  other  to  increase  his  efficiency. 

But  is  this  educational  gain  substantial?     Is  it  more 

*  Vital  Statistics,  pp.  67-70.  The  U.  S.  Bureau  of  the  Census  worked  out 
very  clearly  the  depressing  effect  upon  the  marriage  rate  in  this  country 
wrought  by  the  commercial  "hard  times"  of  1893-94  and  1904.  See  Ccfi- 
sus  Bulletin  96,  1908,  p.  8. 


212  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

than  a  mere  optimistic  suspicion  ?  The  economic  historian 
answers,  yes.  Granting  all  the  disadvantages  of  town  life, 
the  high  rents,  bad  air,  congestion,  even  slums,  it  is  superior 
to  country  life  as  now  organized  ;  largely  because  of  superior 
opportunities  for  self-improvement,  imaginative  stimulus, 
and  satisfaction  of  social  and  intellectual  aspirations. 
The  difference  in  mental  caliber  between  a  town-bred  artisan 
and  an  agricultural  laborer  in  either  England  or  America 
may  be  taken  not  unfairly  as  the  gauge  of  progress  in  in- 
tellect and  culture  which  has  paralleled  in  time  and  area 
the  industrial  revolution.  The  correlation  here  between 
economic  and  educational  advance  if  not  mathematically 
proven  is  at  least  highly  probable.^ 

The  same  process  of  adjustment  between  education  and 
industry  may  be  observed  in  the  Orient.  Confucianism 
set  the  mold  for  centuries  of  Chinese,  Japanese,  and 
Korean  thought.  Why?  Because,  we  are  assured,  the 
economic  system  to  which  this  education  comported  did 
not  change.  It  is  suggested  that  Confucius  personally  had 
more  sympathy  with  power  than  with  weakness,  and  would 
overlook  wickedness  and  oppression  in  authority  rather 
than  resentment  and  revenge  in  men  who  were  suffering 
from  them.  He  could  conceive  of  nothing  so  worthy  of 
condemnation  as  to  be  insubordinate.  Because  he  was 
thus  the  spokesman  of  a  ruhng  class  with  its  mores  and 
economic  policies  he  was  frequently  partial  in  his  judgments 
on  what  happened  to  rulers,  and  unjust  in  his  estimates  of 
the  conduct  of  their  subjects.^  Deliverance  came  not 
through  a  new  rehgion  or  a  new  philosophy,  but  through 

^  Cf.  Thorold  Rogers,  Industrial  and  Commercial  History  of  England, 
40;  Cunningham  and  McArthur,  Outlines  of  English  Industrial  History, 
229,  234;  H.  G.  Wells,  Tono-Bungay,  -jq;  Theodore  Roosevelt,  Special 
Message  as  Preface  to  Report  of  the  Country  Life  Commission,  igog. 

^  Cf.  Legge,  Prolegomena  on  the  Chun  Chin,  p.  50;  Lewis,  Educational 
Conquest  of  the  Far  East,  p.  2 1 . 


THE   ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION   OF   HISTORY      213 

new  trade  relations.  Merchants  from  Holland  introduced 
Western  learning  into  Japan  about  1630.  These  merchant- 
teachers  were  resorted  to  by  young  Japanese  at  Nagasaki. 
Sakuma  embodied  the  new  zeal  for  Occidental  institutions 
and  was  assassinated  for  his  pains  in  1864.  Perry,  Harris, 
and  Lord  Elgin  on  their  commercial  missions  opened  the 
way  for  the  new  education.  As  we  shall  see  later  the  process 
completed  itself  by  reacting  on  the  economic  system  and 
produced  a  real  industrial  revolution  from  which  Japan 
has  not  yet  emerged,  and  which  China  is  just  entering. 

According,  then,  to  the  economic  theory  of  social  life, 
social  progress  in  its  sum  and  in  its  most  important  elements 
is  the  product  of  the  play  of  economic  forces.  Moral  codes, 
ideals,  the  family,  education,  religion,  and  social  structure 
in  general,  all  alike  hark  back  to  some  form  of  the  food- 
quest.  According  to  this  view  the  first  arts  were  economic, 
and  these  primal  arts  have  never  ceded  place  to  any  others. 
The  social  question  is  and  always  has  been  primarily  a  ques- 
tion of  nutrition,  and  particularly  the  methods  of  producing 
and  distributing  food.  Progress  means  in  the  last  analysis 
an  enlargement  of  the  sources  of  subsistence,  and  history 
in  its  highest  significance  is  the  story  of  this  material 
conquest. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE    ECONOMIC    INTERPRETATION    OF    HISTORY 

{Continued) 

Criticism 


Any  just  criticism  of  the  economic  interpretation  of 
history  must  be  prefaced  by  two  qualifications.  In  the 
first  place  we  must  credit  many  adherents  to  this  view 
with  more  moderation  than  they  are  usually  believed  to 
possess.  For  they  freely  admit  that  the  economic  condition 
is  only  the  basis  of  history  not  the  sole  element  in  shaping 
it.  That  is,  to  take  a  mechanical  analogy,  while  other 
motives  or  institutions  may  serve  as  governors  to  the  social 
engine,  the  economic  interest  is  the  steam  that  really  makes 
it  go,  that  makes  it  a  machine  rather  than  a  heap  of  junk. 
Some  economic  determinists,  loyal  socialists,  and  even 
leaders  of  the  socialist  party,  make  still  greater  concessions. 
For  example,  Benoit  Maloin  frankly  declares:  "Les 
facteurs  de  revolution  sont  non  seulement  economiques, 
mais  encore  religieux,  philosophiques,  politiques,  senti- 
mentaux,  esthetiques."  And  even  so  ardent  a  believer  as 
Mr.  Ghent  does  not  require  us  to  believe  that  men's  motives 
and  ideals  are  consciously  economic.  Indeed  he  expressly 
says  that  men  give  themselves  up  to  wounds  and  death 
in  the  struggle  for  foreign  markets,  under  the  belief  that 
they  are  impelled  by  patriotism  or  religion.^    He  tilts  with 

^  Mass  and  Class,  12-14. 
214 


THE  ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION  OF   HISTORY      215 

apparent  vigor  at  those  who  exaggerate  the  influence  of  the 
economic  factor  :  for  not  every  historic  episode  is  reducible 
to  mere  economics.  An  unfortunate  attempt  of  this  kind, 
he  points  out,  is  the  ascription  of  an  ulterior  economic 
motive  to  the  agitation  in  the  United  States  for  the  Cuban 
War.  Yet  he  hedges  with  the  suggestion  that  it  happened 
there  was  no  adverse  economic  motive  prevalent  at  the 
time  sufificiently  strong  to  obstruct  the  exercise  of  this 
altruistic  motive.^ 

Even  Mr.  Rubinow,  polemic  Marxianist  that  he  is,  admits 
that  "in  the  very  nature  of  things,  the  doctrine  of  economic 
interpretation  of  history  does  not  admit  of  proof.  It  is  a 
Weltanschauung  .  .  .  and  we  cannot  conceive  a  Weltan- 
schauung that  can  be  proven."  ^ 

It  is  obvious  that  such  concessions  destroy  absolutely  the 
characteristic  marks  of  the  economic  view  of  history  and 
social  evolution ;  for  they  open  the  door  to  all  manner  of 
interpretations,  and  even  to  the  overbalancing  of  the 
economic  by  a  massing  of  other  factors.  This  is  particu- 
larly disturbing  to  those  who  have  been  led  to  pin  their 
faith  to  this  view  as  to  a  religious  dogma.  For  the  very 
essence  of  dogmatic  religion  is  its  uncompromising  ad- 
herence to  a  principle  which  is  the  all-suflEicient  explanation 
of  human  life  and  its  manifold  problems,  and  which  if 
accepted  without  qualification  or  reserve  offers  a  complete 
plan  of  salvation.  The  inference  here  is  that  since  socialists 
have  begun  to  qualify  the  dogma  of  economic  determinism, 
they  no  longer  consider  it  an  indispensable  element  in 
socialism  considered  either  as  a  religion  or  as  a  body  of 
economic  and  political  theory. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  24.  The  cloven  hoof  reappears  in  the  statement  farther  along 
(p.  29)  that  "though  the  Cuban  war  began  and  was  prosecuted  in  an  out- 
burst of  humane  sentiment,  it  is  probable  that  in  its  continuation,  for  the 
holding  of  the  Philippines,  economic  considerations  dominated  the  adminis- 
tration." 2  Was  Marx  Wrong,  p.  15. 


2l6  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

In  the  second  place,  we  may  with  equal  frankness  admit 
that  the  economic  activities  still  consume  the  largest  share 
of  our  time  and  energies.  Even  Emerson  confessed  that 
his  belly  was  his  master.  We  are  still  in  the  flesh.  And 
much  as  we  should  like  to  consider  the  lilies  how  they  grow, 
and  to  imitate  them  in  their  apparently  joyous,  care-free, 
vegetative  career,  few  of  us  yet  have  the  faith  to  try  their 
methods. 

The  protagonists  of  economic  determinism,  drunk  as 
with  new  wine,  have  been  fascinated  by  the  brutal  direct- 
ness and  novelty  of  the  theory.  Their  opponents  have  been 
terrified  and  all  but  paralyzed  also  by  its  utter  disregard 
and  contempt  for  well-consecrated  tradition.  The  Marx- 
ians never  weary  of  describing  how  modern  economic 
thought  has  dislodged  an  almost  incurably  idealistic  con- 
cept of  history.  Scientific  Socialism  is  supposed  to  have 
driven  idealism  from  its  last  refuge,  the  philosophy  of 
history.  But  the  materiafistic  concept  of  history  and 
human  life  is  not  really  new.  It  is  essentially  primitive, 
because  it  is  the  most  obvious.  Any  ethnographer  knows 
that  it  covers  the  easiest  element  to  grasp  in  the  life  of 
savages.  Their  world  of  feelings  and  ideas  is  incomparably 
more  difficult  to  enter.  I  do  not  mean  to  intimate  that 
the  materialistic  interpretation  is  a  savage  philosophy  and 
therefore  ipso  facto  untrue.  I  mean  merely  that  it  is  not  at  all 
new  (for  as  we  have  already  seen,  savages  think  largely  in 
terms  of  material  satisfactions) ;  and  therefore  by  virtue  of 
its  newness  alone  it  cannot  claim  superior  truth  or  accuracy. 

When  we  come  to  examine  this  doctrine  critically  and  in 
detail,  four  serious  defects  crop  out.  They  are :  (i)  faulty 
historical  perspective;  (2)  neglect  of  the  biological  or 
racial  factors ;  (3)  an  almost  complete  overlooking  of  the 
psychological  elements  in  the  social  process ;  (4)  incomplete 
sociological  analysis. 


THE  ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY     217 


The  art  of  comparative  ethnography  and  the  genetic 
phase  of  sociology  were  scarcely  born  when  the  bases  of  this 
economic  philosophy  were  laid.  But  in  the  last  fifty  years 
a  great  mass  of  evidence  has  been  brought  to  light  which 
bears  heavily  upon  our  problem.  One  of  the  first  effects 
of  these  facts  was  the  overthrow  of  the  old  naive  behef  that 
mankind  have  all  come  through  successively  and  without 
exception  the  stages  of  hunting,  herding,  and  agriculture. 
There  has  been  no  necessary  sequence  here,  just  as  there 
has  been  no  absolutely  uniform  sequence  in  religious  or 
family  forms.  Another  assumption  demolished  was  the 
belief  that  other  elements  of  culture  vary  directly  with  the 
economic  factor.  But  many  peoples  have  been  found 
whose  economic  hfe  is  cast  in  molds  ranging  all  the  way 
from  simple  hunting  and  fishing  up  to  the  lower  forms  of 
agriculture,  yet  whose  culture  in  other  respects  is  remark- 
ably uniform.  Professor  Steinmetz  has  ably  demonstrated 
how  a  classification  of  social  types  arranges  itself  into  a 
progressive  series  when  the  predominant  character  of  their 
intellectual  hfe  is  the  basis  of  comparison ;  and  also  how 
this  progressive  series  is  broken  across,  not  paralleled,  by 
another  series  of  types  based  on  the  general  character  of 
economic  life.^  The  lack  of  symmetry  between  these 
two  series  indicates  an  important  x  unexplained  by  facts  of 
economic  organization. 

But  suppose  we  inspect  history  from  the  angle  of  social 
evolution  or  progress.  By  hypothesis  economic  progress 
ought  to  spell  social  progress,  or  at  least  social  evolution. 
Now,  to  come  at  the  matter  concretely,  in  what  is  economic 
progress  really  supposed  to  consist?  Turn  back  to  the 
typical  economist's  analysis  of  a  progressive  society  (Pro- 

^  S.  R.  Steinmetz,  Classification  des  types  sociales,  Annee  Sociologique, 
ill,  pp.  82-143. 


2l8  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

fessor  Clark,  ante,  p.  1 23) .  Compare  that  analysis  with  the 
other  indices  of  progress  noted  in  the  same  chapter.  Its 
painful  meagerness  is  apparent.  Ask  yourselves  the  ques- 
tion :  Would  the  literal  fulfillment  of  those  economic  terms 
—  and  they  are  liberal  terms  —  constitute  satisfaction  of  the 
whole  range  and  promise  of  human  life  ?  These  are  neces- 
sary terms ;  they  perhaps  are  the  bridge  thrown  across 
the  chasm  which  man  must  pass  in  his  ascent  from  the  clay 
to  divinity.  These  things  spell  wealth.  But  as  the  elder 
texts  on  political  economy  used  to  tell  us  there  are  some 
things  which  are  not  wealth  but  which  may  be  better  than 
wealth. 

What  are  the  means  of  economic  progress?  Professor 
Schmoller  analyzes  them  into  four  :  (i)  certain  psychologic- 
economic  premises ;  (2)  technique ;  (3)  increase  of  popula- 
tion ;  (4)  storing  up  of  capital.^  It  is  evident  that  not  one 
of  these  is  wholly  economic.  Economic  progress  demands 
a  large  well-knit  population.  But  no  mere  economic 
interest  will  incline  large  bodies  of  people  to  reside  per- 
manently, peaceably,  and  healthily  together.  Moreover, 
a  long  previous  social  discipline  —  largely  political,  religious, 
moral,  educational  —  is  the  prerequisite  to  such  intensive 
group  life  as  highly  developed  industrial  organization  de- 
mands. The  denser  a  population  the  greater  the  demand 
for  mutual  regard  and  considerateness.  All  of  these 
economic  terms  are  only  superficial  concepts.  Increasing 
needs,  technical  progress,  denser  population,  larger  pro- 
duction, all  these,  says  Schmoller,  are  only  externals ; 
progress  really  rests  on  the  total  development  of  mankind, 
though  most  intimately  bound  up  with  development  in  the 
direction  of  greater  economic  capacities  and  virtues  and  the 
creation  of  larger,  more  complex,  and  better  regulated  social- 
industrial  organs  and  institutions.     For  this  development 

^  Crundriss,  etc.  ii,  653. 


THE   ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY      219 

there  is  needed  not  only  an  elite  already  capable  of  expert 
leadership,  but  also  the  possibility  of  education  and  advance- 
ment for  all  the  other  members  of  the  community.^  That 
is  to  say,  not  only  economic  interdependence  and  high 
specialization  and  complexity  in  the  industrial  regime,  but 
also  some  elasticity  in  the  personal  factors  in  industry,  some 
means  of  free  circulation  of  goods  and  men,  are  necessary 
to  transform  economic  development  into  social  progress ; 
and  the  means  for  securing  such  social  elasticity  are  by 
no  means  wholly  economic.^ 

Suppose  we  look  at  another  phase  of  history,  namely, 
history  as  past  politics,  and  search  out  the  economic  im- 
plications. Unfortunately,  there  is  altogether  too  much 
evidence  at  times  of  unholy  alliances  between  economic 
interests  and  politics.  But  that  in  itself  does  not  warrant 
the  conclusion  that  all  politics  is  past  economics.  Indeed, 
the  reverse  seems  nearer  the  truth.  Economic  progress  fre- 
quently lags  behind  political  advance.  Times  of  political 
development  through  wars,  conquests,  or  internal  solidarity 
usually  are  followed,  not  preceded,  by  periods  of  intense 
economic  activity.  SchmoUer  goes  so  far  as  to  declare 
that  industrial  advance  comes  usually  a  full  generation  or 
two  in  the  wake  of  political  movement.  Thus  the  indus- 
trial rise  of  Greece  succeeded  the  Persian  wars ;  that  of 
Rome  appeared  between  the  conquest  of  central  Italy  and 
the  end  of  the  Punic  wars ;  that  of  France  after  centrali- 
zation under  Louis  XI,  Louis  XIV,  and  Napoleon  I ;  that 
of  Holland  after  the  Wars  for  Independence  against  Spain ; 
that  of  England  after  Elizabeth,  Cromwell,  William  of 
Orange,  and  the  Napoleonic  wars ;  that  of  Italy  and  Ger- 
many after  their  unification  through  the  fierce  struggles  of 
1859-70.^    We  might  also  add  that  the  gigantesque  in- 

*  Ibid.,  ii,  654.  ^  Cf.  Macgregor,  Evolution  of  Industry,  pp.  54-61. 

^Grundriss,  ii,  675. 


2  20  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

dustrialism  of  the  United  States  appeared  after  the  Civil 
War. 

Much  as  we  Americans  have  been  taught  to  hate  cen- 
trahzation  and  absolutism,  we  have  to  admit  that  a  strong 
central  government,  even  though  absolute  and  despotic 
like  those  of  Henry  VIII,  Elizabeth,  Louis  XIV,  and  Riche- 
lieu, is  a  force  for  progress  towards  modern  nationahsm, 
which  alone  could  have  given  rise  to  modern  economic 
institutions.  European  state  building  of  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  together  with  mercantilism, 
paved  the  way  for  the  industrial  revolution.  And  both  were 
based  on  education.  It  was  precisely  during  this  period 
from  the  fifteenth  to  the  nineteenth  century  that  printing, 
literature,  schools,  and  secular  as  well  as  religious  propa- 
ganda created  unified  bodies  of  thought,  pubhc  opinion,  real 
organic  social  unities.  Just  this  process  of  more  intense 
socialization  was  necessary  to  further  pohtical  and  indus- 
trial advance.  And,  through  it  all,  the  head  and  the  soul 
are  no  less  involved  than  the  belly.  The  transition  from 
household  or  village  economy,  like  the  transition  from  a 
natural  to  a  money  economy,  is  possible  only  when  preceded 
or  accompanied  by  changes  in  law,  government,  morals,  and 
intelligence.  Modern  money,  for  example,  is  in  no  uncer- 
tain sense  a  governmental  institution. 

Similar  discrepancies  occur  if  we  envisage  history  in  terms 
of  educational  movements.  We  have  already  shown  how 
education  is  dependent  upon  economic  processes.  But  it 
is  no  less  true  that  economic  progress  depends  upon  im- 
proved education.  Hints  of  this  dependence  have  ap- 
peared throughout  the  preceding  discussion.  But  it  is 
worth  while  to  labor  the  point  if  for  no  other  reason  than  to 
demonstrate  the  complexity  and  interdependency  of  social 
activities. 

Arnold  Toynbee  pointed  out  four  causes  of  the  progress 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION   OF   HISTORY      221 

of  the  English  working  classes  during  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury :  (i)  Free  Trade,  permitting  cheap  and  steady  prices 
of  food,  and  steady  employment  and  wages ;  (2)  Factory 
Legislation  ;  (3)  Trades-unions ;  (4)  Cooperative  Societies.^ 
Three  out  of  these  four  causes  are  dependent  unreservedly 
upon  education.  The  chief  hindrance  to  the  spread  of 
cooperative  enterprise  is  the  lack  of  definite  training  for 
cooperators.  Toynbee  recognized  this  and  told  his  work- 
ingmen  friends  that  plain  truth.  The  same  applies  no  less 
to  the  spread  of  disciplined  trades-unionism.  The  chief 
reason  why  the  class  of  casual  labor  catches  the  dregs  of  the 
labor  market  is  its  unorganized  character.  And  the  chief 
reason  why  casual  labor  is  probably  the  most  resistant 
element  in  the  problem  of  poverty  is  that  it  is  too  ignorant, 
too  untrained,  too  inefificient  to  organize  itself  or  be  organ- 
ized. The  third  cause,  factory  legislation,  was  if  anything 
more  of  an  educational  than  an  economic  or  sanitary  cam- 
paign, especially  in  its  attacks  on  child  labor. ^  Indeed,  the 
economists  are  beginning  to  stress  more  and  more  the 
economic  role  of  popular  education.  One  of  the  most 
orthodox  and  most  influential  of  modern  political  economists 
went  out  of  his  way  to  demonstrate  how  education  permits 
the  Law  of  Increasing  Returns  to  counterbalance  and 
nulHfy  the  Law  of  Diminishing  Returns.^ 

The  mere  statement  that  industry  is  dependent  upon 
education  might  be  taken  to  mean  that  man  is  no  more  than 
a  producer  or  consumer  of  economic  goods ;  for  the  motive 
of  his  education  might  be  wholly  economic.  But  there  is 
plenty  of  evidence  outside  the  sacred  books  of  the  world  and 
works  on  philosophy  to  show  that  man  is  not  quite  as  the 

^  The  Industrial  Revolution,  chap.  xiv. 

2  See  Report  on  Condition  of  Woman  and  Child  Wage-Earners  :'n  the  United 
States,  vol.  vi,  "The  Beginnings  of  Child  Labor  Legislation  in  Certain  States," 
passim. 

^  Marshall,  Princ.  of  Econ.,  5th  ed.,  i,  318-19,  205-20. 


222  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

beasts  of  the  field.  Even  in  the  most  primitive  peoples 
the  aesthetic  combines  with  the  economic  motive.  Schwein- 
furth  testified  to  this  fact  from  his  travels  in  Africa : 

"It  is  among  the  most  secluded  inhabitants,  indeed 
among  the  rudest  tribes,  who  are  partly  still  addicted  to 
cannibalism,  aye,  in  the  very  heart  of  Africa,  whither  not 
even  the  use  of  cotton  stuffs  and  hardly  that  of  glass  beads 
has  penetrated,  where  we  find  the  indigenous  mechanical 
instinct,  the  delight  in  the  production  of  works  of  art  for 
the  embellishment  and  convenience  of  life,  the  delight  in 
self-acquired  property  best  preserved."  ^ 

In  accounting  for  the  huge  industrial  structure  which 
to  many  people  means  America,  it  is  not  sufficient  to  enu- 
merate the  vast  natural  economic  resources  of  the  country, 
its  natural  advantages  of  climate,  soil,  configuration,  har- 
bors, etc.  The  quality  of  its  people  is  the  preponderant 
factor.  The  making  of  colonial  America,  hence  the  making 
of  the  twentieth  century  United  States,  was  based  on  the 
intellectual  baggage  and  the  educational  traditions  which 
the  colonists  brought  with  them  from  Europe.  Vast 
natural  resources  give  an  opportunity  for  civilization,  they 
facilitate  the  march  of  progress,  but  they  cannot  initiate 
nor  maintain  a  rising  state  of  culture. 

The  creation  of  an  industrial  Orient  has  been  no  less 
an  educational  triumph.  It  was  neither  a  great  army  nor 
modern  Big  Business,  but  five  thousand  foreign-educated 
scholars  that  prepared  the  way  of  progress  for  modern 
China.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  assess  the  share  of  the  mis- 
sionary in  this  educational  conquest  of  the  Far  East.  An 
English  writer,  however,  credits  American  missionaries 
with  the  breakdown  of  the  old  static  regime  of  the  classics, 
under  which  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  people  could  not 

^  Aries  AfricancE,  cited  by  Mason,  Origin  of  Inventions,  23. 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION  OF   HISTORY      223 

read  and  ninety-nine  per  cent  could  not  write,  and  with  the 
sudden  rise  of  modern,  more  nearly  universal,  education.' 

As  a  final  illustration  of  the  educational  basis  of  indus- 
try take  W.  K.  Clifford's  essay  on  Higher  Mathemalics 
and  Scientific  Progress.  In  this  study  he  demonstrates  with 
his  customary  lucidity  how  certain  forward  steps  in  both 
science  and  invention  have  been  seriously  hindered  through 
neglect  of  higher  mathematics.  Fantastical  as  they  appear 
to  the  practical  farmer,  or  electrician,  or  engineer,  the 
ethereal  experiments  and  mathematical  demonstrations  of 
the  laboratory  have  a  marvelously  concrete  bearing  on  the 
field  work  of  the  manufacturer  and  the  artisan.  Voca' 
tional  education,  which  is  designed  to  guide  youth  into  more 
skilled  occupations  and  away  from  "blind-alley  jobs,"  will 
itself  become  a  blind  alley  if  it  focuses  all  its  energies  upon 
mere  routine  craft  operations  and  neglects  the  theoretical 
and  social  background  of  those  crafts ;  for  the  background 
alone  confers  relationships  and  meaning  upon  the  individual 
job  and  provides  in  addition  the  means  for  improving  craft 
technique. 

3 

For  reasons  both  of  policy  and  conviction,  economic 
determinists  have  assiduously  overlooked  the  race  factor  in 
their  efforts  to  concentrate  attention  on  economic  class 
interests  as  the  motive  force  in  social  change.  But  whether 
we  like  it  or  not,  the  race  element  obtrudes  itself.  In  the 
interests  of  progress  it  may  be  desirable,  as  Professor 
Patten  demands,  "to  reduce  this  mass  of  rabid  race-an- 
tagonisms and  unite  people  of  similar  culture  into  super- 
racial  units,"  and  to  put  culture  above  race  aspirations.^ 
But  from  the  historical  standpoint,  things  have  never  gone 

^  Soothill,  Contemporary  Review,  98 :  403. 

2  Letter  to  The  New  Republic,  Nov.  14,  1914,  p.  21. 


2  24  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

this  way.  Professor  Patten  admits  that  "each  national 
aspiration  is  local,  and  so  interwoven  with  interests  other 
than  economic  that  it  blocks  the  social  progress  of  the  con- 
tinent." But  the  dictum  is  just  as  true  when  put  into  the 
past  tense.  This  peculiar  kind  of  group  feeling,  whether 
city,  tribal,  or  national,  becomes  a  class-consciousness  which 
cuts  across  all  others.  And  it  makes  not  the  slightest 
difference  whether  there  is  any  such  reality  as  race  or  not. 
It  is  enough  that  people  believe  there  is.  The  sudden  col- 
lapse of  the  International  Workingmen's  Association  in 
those  terrible  days  of  July  and  August,  1914,  was  a  dra- 
matic illustration  of  how  easy  it  is  to  burn  away  the  flimsy 
walls  of  economic  class  consciousness  in  the  leaping  fires  of 
race-prejudice  and  national  patriotism.  I  am  not  arguing 
for  maintenance  of  strict  racial  lines  and  race  passions. 
But  the  fact  remains  that  given  things  as  they  are,  race 
constitutes  a  serious  limitation  upon  any  exclusive  eco- 
nomic view  of  history.  The  cry  of  race  peril  has  always 
been  enough  to  snarl  up  the  economic  order. 


But  even  more  serious  than  neglect  of  the  race  factor  is 
omission  of  the  psychological  elements  in  history  and  con- 
temporary social  life.  It  is  evident  that  much  or  most  of 
the  race  question  is  purely  psychologic  in  essence.  But 
mental  factors  cut  across  other  parts  of  the  economic  field. 
They  include  sex  and  other  instincts,  tropisms  like  love  of 
contact,  reflexes  and  stimuli  in  general,  imitation,  desires, 
habit,  custom,  convention,  law,  religion,  and  the  art  im- 
pulse. 

Study  love  of  contact  for  example ;  it  drives  men  to 
form  groups,  not  only  because  they  can  feed  better  together, 
but  also  and  primarily  for  protection  and  peace  of  mind, 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERrRETATION  OF  HISTORY      225 

two  presuppositions  for  economic  development.  Out  of 
such  fundamental  tropisms  are  built  up  social  structures 
and  activities.  Marx  conceived  other  activities  of  life  as 
mere  outcroppings  of  economic  processes.  But  this  is 
clearly  fallacious ;  and  for  the  very  good  reason  that 
thought  is  deeper  and  wider  than  mere  economic  activity. 
An  individual's  occupation  is  largely  contingent  upon  local 
circumstances,  while  his  mental  outfit  reaches  back  hundreds 
of  generations  quite  beyond  the  absolute  control  of  circum- 
stance. His  leisure  activities  frequently  overtop  his  voca- 
tion as  a  determinant  of  conduct.  It  is  social  convention 
and  discipline  that  reduce  the  nomad  in  us  to  the  sedentary 
life  of  conformity  and  economic  preoccupation  and  stand- 
ardization.^ Again,  economic  activities  have  to  do  largely 
with  habits.  But  habits  are  not  nearly  so  stable  as  we 
might  believe.  I  cannot  go  quite  so  far  as  Professor  Gra- 
ham Wallas  would  carry  us  in  emphasizing  inherited  mental 
outfit,  but  on  the  whole  we  may  accept  his  generalization 
that  not  only  are  habits  when  produced  more  unstable 
than  our  inherited  dispositions,  but  the  process  of  producing 
habits  by  mere  repetition  is  uncertain  in  its  results.^ 

Further  difficulties  emerge  when  we  attempt  to  apply 
the  economic  yard-stick  to  motives,  desires,  instincts,  and 
sentiments.  First,  it  is  safe  to  deny  that  there  is  any  such 
thing  as  the  economic  motive  per  se.  I  have  tried  to  dis- 
tinguish clearly  between  such  a  supposed  motive  and  the 
satisfaction  of  the  whole  range  of  human  desires  and  needs. 
The  economic  interest,  that  is,  an  interest  in  food,  clothing, 
and  shelter,  is  subordinate  to  the  even  more  fundamental 
air  interest  and  sunlight  interest.  The  really  basic  interest 
is  life,  the  will-to-live.  Nobody  wants  food  or  clothes  or 
shelter  in  themselves.     Everybody  wants  to  be  comfort- 

^  Cf.  EUwood,  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  17  :  42-3. 
^  The  Great  Society,  78. 

Q 


2  26  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

able,  happy,  well-off,  safe,  healthy,  insured  against  mishap 
and  deficit.  Our  desire  is  for  well-being,  for  equilibrium. 
But  since  economic  activity  most  obviously  satisfies  the 
majority  of  these  cravings  it  was  easy  to  make  the  mistake 
of  assuming  that  the  economic  activity  was  the  real  motive 
and  end-in-itself.^  Indeed,  I  believe  that  the  primordial 
motives  for  property  were  not  in  the  remotest  degree 
economic.  The  origin  of  real  property  was  in  all  probabil- 
ity the  grave  or  burial  mound.  And  personal  property 
was  born  of  vanity ;  it  was  ornamental.  Savages  are  fre- 
quently reckless  about  such  basic  property  as  food  and 
clothing,  but  will  cling  sedulously,  aye,  ridiculously,  to 
their  petty  ornaments. 

In  this  connection  it  might  be  well  to  examine  somewhat 
critically  again  Mr.  Ghent's  statement  of  the  case.  You 
will  remember  he  implied  that  men  are  not  always  or  even 
generally  conscious  of  the  economic  motive  which  impels 
them,  and  that  the  motive  they  believe  dominant  is  a  mere 
illusion.  But  what  is  a  motive  ?  Can  you  have  an  uncon- 
scious or  illusory  motive  ?  Is  it  not  a  contradiction  in 
terms  ?  There  may  be  a  conflict  between  instinct,  habit,  and 
deliberate  reasoned  conduct,  or  between  the  various  selves 
which  make  up  one's  personality.  There  may  be  a  struggle 
between  motives.  There  may  be  hypnotic  control  over 
one's  action.  There  may  be  illusion  as  to  the  facts  upon 
which  a  given  resolution  to  act  is  based.  There  may  be 
deception  on  the  part  of  an  individual's  teachers,  leaders, 
tribe-mates  as  to  the  real  purpose  of  a  missionary  expedi- 

'  Cf.  E.  C.  Hayes,  Amcr.  Jour.  SocioL,  i8  :  4Q5.  It  is  of  interest  to  note 
that  Professor  Taussig  can  find  no  economic  interest  as  such,  and  rejects  the 
notion,  "economic  man,"  because  he  cannot  discov'er  any  instincts  of 
accumulation  or  barter ;  the  instinct  for  contrivance  or  workmanship  rather 
than  desire  for  wealth  explains  inventiveness;  desire  for  wealth  is  a  com- 
posite of  instincts  of  contrivance,  domination,  emulation,  etc.  See  his 
Inventors  and  Moncy-Makers,  pp.  4,  79  ff.,  etc. 


THE   ECONOMIC  INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY      227 

tion,  a  voyage  of  discovery,  a  war,  or  the  founding  of  a 
university  or  charitable  endowment.  But  when  that  in- 
dividual's thinking  reaches  the  stage  of  formulating  a 
motive  dominant  enough  and  compelling  enough  to  explode 
into  action,  that  motive  for  him  is  no  illusion ;  it  is  not 
vague ;  it  is  clear-cut,  it  is  definite,  it  is  conscious,  solid, 
honest,  sincere.  Otherwise  it  may  be  something  else,  but 
it  is  not  a  motive,  economic,  or  any  other  sort. 

Other  questions  apropos  of  motive  demand  a.  statement 
here,  if  not  a  detailed  answer.  Why  does  the  savage  spend 
months  decorating  his  spear  or  shield  or  pottery?  Why 
does  the  college  professor  or  pure  scientist  work  year  after 
year  at  a  far  lower  wage  than  he  could  command  in  other 
work  ?  Why  does  the  preacher  or  the  social  worker  or  the 
Salvation  Army  undergo  deprivations  and  insult  for  the  sake 
of  men's  souls  and  a  cleaner,  better  world?  Why  does  a 
vigorous,  independent,  prosperous  woman  leave  her  eco- 
nomic independence  to  marry  and  suffer  the  pangs  of  ma- 
ternity and  the  pinch  of  limited  income  ?  What  prompted 
that  famous  group  of  young  doctors  to  submit  themselves 
to  mosquito-fever  tests?  What  drove  Arnold  Toynbee, 
the  brilliant  young  economist,  to  the  East  End  of  London? 
Why  did  two  students  recently  brave  filth  and  vermin  in- 
numerable to  gain  authentic  knowledge  of  cheap  lodging 
house  conditions  in  Chicago?  Was  the  Hippocratic  oath 
an  economic  formula?  Is  progress  in  medicine  due  to  the 
economic  motive,  to  a  desire  for  higher  fees,  to  a  desire  to 
conserve  human  life  because  of  a  reverence  for  life  or  be- 
cause of  a  sense  of  the  economic  value  of  life  and  labor 
power?  Granting  the  presence  of  a  dose  of  the  economic 
in  these  cases,  it  is  perfectly  obvious  to  an  open  mind  that 
it  is  completely  outweighed  by  devotion  to  science,  pas- 
sion for  life,  love  of  men.  In  fact,  the  economic  aspect 
of  health  conservation  is  a  development  of  very  recent 


2  28  THEORIES  OF  SOCLVL  PROGRESS 

years,  and  is  largely  the  result  of  an  excellent  and  vig- 
orous propaganda  by  economists,  actuaries,  and  insurance 
companies.  After  bread,  education,  cried  the  intrepid 
Danton.  But  before  bread,  sentiment,  is  the  rallying 
thought  which  alone  can  explain  the  recrudescence  of 
nationalistic  feelings  in  modern  Poland,  Bohemia,  Finland, 
or  the  Balkan  States. 

Lester  F.  Ward  attempted  a  refutation  of  the  economic 
interpretationists  and  a  reconciliation  between  them  and 
the  ideologists.^  Yet  his  compromise  reminds  one  of  that 
compromise  between  a  wife  who  wanted  linen  and  her 
husband  who  stood  for  muslin :  they  compromised  on 
muslin ;    Ward   compromises  on   the  economic  basis. 

"The  universal  world  ideas,"  he  says,  "which  are  said  to 
lead  or  rule  the  world  are  simply  beliefs.  .  .  .  Beliefs  rest 
on  interest.  But  what  is  interest?  It  is  feeling.  World 
views  grow  out  of  feelings.  .  .  .  Now  it  is  just  this  element 
of  interest  that  links  beliefs  to  desires  and  reconciles  the 
ideological  and  economic  interpretations  of  history :  for 
economics,  by  its  very  definition  of  value,  is  based  on  desires 
and  their  satisfactions.  Every  belief  embodies  a  desire,  or 
rather  a  great  mass  of  desires." 

So  far  so  good.  But  next  comes  the  extraordinary  prop- 
osition : 

"Desires  are  economic  demands  arising  out  of  the  nature 
of  man  and  the  conditions  of  existence.  .  .  .  All  interest 
is  essentially  economic." 

This  is  manifestly  exaggeration.  For  what  is  the  eco- 
nomic element  in  the  procreative  instinct,  in  the  relation 
of  mother  to  infant,  in  the  instinct  for  play?  Yet  all  these 
things  represent  definite  and  universal  desires  which  eco- 
nomic goods  can  neither  motivate  nor  satisfy.     No,  there  is 

^  Applied  Sociology,  Part  I,  chap.  v. 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION   OF  HISTORY      229 

an  enormous  range  of  feelings,  desires,  ideas,  and  satisfac- 
tions completely  outside  the  economic  pale.  Some  of  these, 
like  the  sex  instinct,  are  so  imperious  that  they  may  shatter 
economic  bonds.  So  far  is  it  from  true  that  our  economics 
wholly  control  our  ideas,  that  we  are  almost  justified  in 
afHirming  the  opposite.  For  example,  so  long  as  we  hold 
to  our  present  ideas  of  profit,  of  property,  of  what  is  most 
worth  while,  our  economic  system  will  persist  in  all  its  force 
and  with  all  its  evils.  Of  course  this  is  overstating  the  case, 
for  on  the  other  hand,  so  long  as  we  cling  to  the  present 
system,  our  ideas  will  be  colored  by  it.  The  real  solution 
of  this  apparent  antagonism  between  ideas  and  economics 
must  come,  as  we  shall  see  later,  not  by  exaggerating  either 
but  by  considering  both  as  merely  elements  in  an  organic 
unity  —  the  whole  life  of  society  —  larger  than  either. 


The  sociological  analysis  of  thorough-going  economic 
determinists  is  in  general  faulty  and  sometimes  extremely 
naive.  While  society  is  not  an  organism  in  the  strict 
biological  sense,  yet  societal  life  has  an  organic  character 
of  its  own,  rigorous  in  its  functioning  and  no  more  reducible 
to  fixed  categories  than  is  life  itself.  Every  part  of  the 
social  structure  is  more  or  less  closely  articulated,  every 
function  of  society  is  more  or  less  conditioned  by  every 
other,  every  product  of  a  social  group,  whether  law  or  classes 
or  religion  or  ideals  is  not  a  chemically  pure  metal  but  is 
essentially  an  alloy.  Hence,  the  economic  interpretation 
bears  just  the  same  relation  to  the  whole  truth  of  history 
and  social  life  as,  say,  the  science  of  mathematics  or  chem- 
istry bears  to  the  whole  of  human  knowledge.  There  is  no 
one  science  which  englobes  the  sum  of  truth,  or  which  is 
more  fundamental  than  any  other.     Each  separate  science 


> 


^ 


230  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

deals  with  only  one  aspect  of  truth,  picks  out  certain  factors 
which  fit  in  with  its  methods  and  aims,  and  studies  them 
from  an  angle  suited  to  its  purposes.  Likewise  with  any 
interpretation  of  human  history.  It  is  quite  beyond  re- 
proach to  take  the  economic  view  or  the  chemical  view  of 
human  life  if  that  will  further  the  general  purposes  of 
human  life  or  the  particular  science  involved.  But  it  is 
wholly  indefensible  from  any  standpoint  whatever  to  foist 
this  narrow  angular  view  upon  us  as  the  whole  social  truth 
or  even  the  most  important  phase  of  that  truth. ^ 

The  phenomena  of  class  struggle,  of  which  Socialists 
make  so  much,  may  serve  as  an  illustration.  Classes  are 
just  as  normal  and  essential  to  social  life  as  is  the  web  to  the 
spider.  But  the  hitch  occurs  in  declaring  that  any  one 
type  of  class  is  any  more  persistent  and  dominant  than 
any  other.  Another  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that  classes 
are  not  water-tight ;  they  interpenetrate,  because  a  given 
individual  is  at  one  and  the  same  time  member  of  a  dozen 
or  a  hundred  classes,  because  he  pursues  a  dozen  or  a  hundred 
interests.  And  circumstances  alone  decide  which  interest, 
therefore  which  class,  shall  claim  his  supreme  fealty.  His- 
tory does  not  prove  that  the  economic  interest  commands 
this  unfailing  allegiance.  It  is  only  necessary  to  recall 
the  failure  of  the  General  Strike  or  to  remember  that  so  far 
every  attempt  to  unite  Irish  workingmen  on  an  economic 
basis  has  failed  signally  because  of  the  dissensions  along 
class  lines  resulting  from  the  interjection  of  political  or 
religious  issues. 

Law,  while  to  a  certain  extent  the  mere  crystallization 
of  economic  sentiments,  cannot  by  any  means  be  limited 
to  them ;    it  is  a  chart  which  records  the  crossing  and 

^  Professor  Cooley  has  contributed  perhaps  the  most  able  criticism  of  this 
squint-eyed  method  of  interpreting  history.  It  represents  the  "organic"  as 
against  what  might  be  called  the  "factor"  or  particularist  view.  Publ. 
Amer.  Econ.  Assoc,  3d  series,  vol.  v,  pp.  426  ff. 


THE    ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION   OF   HISTORY      231 

eddying  of  various  counter-currents  within  the  stream  of 
social  life.  The  folkways,  customs,  taboos,  which  contain 
the  seeds  of  law,  correspond  to  demands  of  group  welfare, 
which  as  we  have  already  seen,  means  more  than  mere  food, 
clothing,  and  shelter.  Custom  decides  what  inventions 
shall  live,  and  determines  in  no  small  degree  what  shall  be 
produced  and  how,  and  also  to  whom  the  product  shall  go. 
Tradition,  the  dead  hand,  not  only  tends  to  perpetuate 
ancient  economic  institutions  as  well  as  other  social  forms, 
but  it  also  may  act  as  a  serious  drag  upon  present  and 
future  economic  movements.  Comte's  assertion  that  the 
living  are  more  and  more  governed  by  the  dead,  applies  no 
less  to  industry  than  to  religion  and  law.  Primitive  taboos 
codify  the  fact  that  man  is  puny  and  environed  by  mighty 
dangers.  But  these  dangers  reach  beyond  starvation, 
drouth,  poisonous  food,  and  other  purely  alimentary  inter- 
ests. They  cover  relations  between  the  sexes,  between  men 
and  gods  or  demons.  Some  are  protective  and  positive, 
others  negative  and  destructive.  The  taboo  on  fields  of 
growing  crops  is  an  economic  device  to  insure  a  mature 
harvest  against  undisciplined  appetite.  So  also  is  the 
Seri  Indian  taboo  on  pelicans  to  prevent  their  extermina- 
tion. So,  too,  our  closed  game  seasons.  But  on  the  other 
hand  the  taboo  sometimes  cuts  directly  across  the  economic 
interest.  Where  totemism  prevails  (it  has  been  almost 
universal)  it  invariably  taboos  eating  the  totem  animal,  and 
frequently  this  animal  would  afiford  a  ready  food  supply. 
Whole  groups  have  been  reduced  to  starvation  because  of 
this  taboo. 

Again,  while  there  is  and  always  has  been  an  organic 
connection  between  religion  and  the  prevailing  mode  of  pro- 
duction, it  is  quite  possible  to  exaggerate  the  direct  influ- 
ence of  the  economic  motive  on  religion  and  thereby  to 
exclude  other  cognate  influences.     To  be  sure,  a  class  or 


232  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

caste  system  of  wealth  or  politics  is  not  laid  aside  as  one 
leaves  his  rubbers  and  umbrella  at  the  church  door,  but 
actually  enters  the  church  and  dominates  both  pulpit 
and  pews.  St.  James  gave  his  contemporaries  some  very 
direct  and  even  caustic  advice  on  this  subject.  But  on  the 
other  hand  religion  has  in  all  ages,  though  perhaps  more 
strikingly  in  primitive  times,  interfered  in  the  industrial 
realm.  The  custom  of  destroying  all  a  man's  property  at 
his  death ;  the  habit  of  burying  most  costly  clothes,  weap- 
ons, tools;  of  slaughtering  slaves,  wives,  or  animals  as 
funeral  offerings;  the  taboos  upon  use  of  land  in  certain 
phases  of  demonism ;  the  desertion  of  whole  villages  for 
ceremonial  reasons;  fasting;  the  Sabbath:  all  these 
typify  the  huge  wastes  and  frictions  which  religion  may 
introduce  into  an  economic  system.  Medieval  prejudices 
and  laws  against  usury  bear  witness  to  the  same  fact. 
Even  in  more  modern  times  industrial  development  has 
frequently  been  hampered  by  religious  prejudices.^ 

Another  example  of  the  failure  to  observe  the  organic 
nature  of  social  life  occurs  in  the  claim  that  ideas,  knowl- 
edge, science,  that  is,  the  very  content  and  method  of 
education,  do  not  on  their  own  merit  contribute  directly  to 
social  progress.  Professor  Patten  defends  this  claim  in  no 
uncertain  terms.  "Science  has  little  power  to  alter  na- 
tional thought  by  direct  means,  but  it  has  great  power  in 
creating  new  economic  conditions,  and  these  modify  na- 

^  Richardson  in  his  Industrial  Problems,  p.  222,  cites  an   illuminating 

instance  of  just  this  state  of  mind  :   "The  school  board  at  Lancaster,  Ohio, 

^in  1828,  refused  to  permit  the  schoolhouse  to  be  used  for  the  discussion  of  the 

question  as  to  whether  railroads  were  practical  or  not,  and  the  matter  was 

f  recently  called  to  mind  by  an  old  document  that  reads  as  follows  :  'You  are 
welcome  to  use  the  schoolhouse  to  debate  all  proper  questions  in,  but  such 
things  as  railroads  and  telegraphs  are  impossibilities  and  rank  infidelity. 

y  There  is  nothing  in  the  Word  of  God  about  them.  If  God  had  designed  that 
His  intelligent  creatures  should  travel  at  the  frightful  speed  of  fifteen  miles 

(    an  hour,  by  steam,  He  would  have  clearly  foretold  it  through  His  holy 

\  prophets.     It  is  a  device  of  Satan  to  lead  immortal  souls  down  to  Hell.'" 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY      233 

tional  thought."  This  sounds  suspiciously  Hke  tweedle- 
dum and  tweedle-dee ;  for  thought  must  have  been  changed 
before  men  adopted  new  inventions  or  other  changes  in 
economic  conditions.  A  new  economy  is  not  a  bolt  from 
the  blue  but  a  solid  precipitate  of  human  minds  in  commo- 
tion. New  increments  to  knowledge  produce  revolutions 
in  economic  technique,  and  these  revolutions  induce  further 
adjustments  and  accommodations  in  thought,  and  so  the 
process  goes  on,  each  phase  appearing  as  both  cause  and 
effect. 

At  this  place  should  come  the  criticism  which  the  idealists 
lay  up  against  the  materialist-economic  school.  But  in  the 
interests  of  peace  and  clarity  of  exposition  I  shall  reserve 
the  statement  of  their  case  for  the  general  chapter  on  the 
idealistic  interpretation  of  history  and  progress,  and  rest 
content  there  with  pointing  out  that  sometimes  ideas  or 
sentiments,  perhaps  even  poHtical  shibboleths,  become  im- 
perious enough  to  subordinate  and  overlay  accepted  eco- 
nomic interests.  A  good  illustration  of  this  particular  type 
of  criticism  of  the  economic  interpretation  may  be  found  in 
Professor  E.  D.  Adams'  Power  of  Ideals  in  American  History. 
Professor  Adams  attacks  both  the  militant  geographic  and 
economic  views  of  history;  or  at  least  refuses  to  see  in 
them  the  whole  explanation  of  man,  and  shows  how  in 
several  episodes  in  American  history  ideals  and  emotions  to 
an  appreciable  extent  dictated  the  course  of  events :  such 
ideals,  notably,  as  nationality,  anti-slavery,  and  manifest 
destiny.  An  American  economist,  moreover,  goes  so  far  as 
to  assert  that  ideals  and  not  mere  economic  logic  or  financial 
expediency  are  at  the  bottom  of  American  financial  pohcies. 
It  is  almost  a  truism  that  financial  pohcies  of  this  nation 
and  economic  reforms  in  general  have  to.  be  translated  into 
moral  terms  or  ideals  before  they  command  the  interest  and 
support  of  the  larger  pubhc.     Thus  protection  and  capital- 


234  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ism  become  moral  monstrosities  before  they  are  extirpated 
as  economic  heresies.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  fact  that 
the  ideal  may  be  a  gross  illusion  is  immaterial :  its  power 
to  dictate  action  remains.  But  here  again,  just  as  there 
is  no  economic  interest-as-such,  neither  is  there  any  ideal- 
as-such.  The  ideal  colors  and  is  colored  by  other  motives 
at  work  in  group  life.  All  we  mean  is  that  certain  ideals 
other  than  economic  must  be  reckoned  with  in  social  inter- 
pretation. As  we  shall  see  later,  there  is  a  profound  philo- 
sophical and  psychological  reason  in  human  nature  which 
appears  to  make  it  necessary  for  men  to  ideahze  their  con- 
duct. Emotion  hastens  to  generate  ideas  which  will  fit 
into  and  dig  deeper  the  emotional  channels.  Emotion 
recognizes  its  own  instability  and  calls  thought  to  rationalize 
it  and  hold  it  up.  Just  as  Nietzsche  declared  that  a  good 
war  hallows  any  cause,  so  perhaps  any  persistent  emotion 
can  sooner  or  later  secure  the  benediction  of  an  intellectual 
ideal. 

It  is  on  these  grounds  that  Professor  Dewey  analyzes 
the  strange  debacle  of  the  German  intellectuals  and  their 
naive  apologetics  during  the  earlier  stages  of  the  Great 
War.  "Men,"  he  says,  "are  profoundly  moral  even  in 
their  immoralities.  Especially  do  they  in  their  collective 
and  persistent  activities  require  the  support  of  a  justifying 
conscience.  Nothing  is  so  paralyzing  to  action  as  pro- 
longed doubt  as  to  the  justice  of  one's  cause.  .Jhe  notjpn 
that  men  can  act  enrlun'npdy  and  deliber?^tfly  ^t  the  pype^iRe 
of  others,  in  behalf  of  their  owiiadvantage^jjstJieiiause 
they  perceive  it~tb  be  thSrI^wn_aBvanla^e^_J£--ar-jaTth  — 
/io-spite  of  its  cur-gency.  Ideal  ends  and  moral  responsibil- 
ities are  always  invoked,  and  only  uninstructed  cynicism 
*^ill  assign  conscious  hypocrisy  in  explanation.  Men 
must  be  stayed  in  their  serious  enterprises  by  moral  justi- 
fications, —  this  is  a  necessity  which  knows  no  law  but 


THE   ECONOMIC   INTERPRETATION  OF  HISTORY      235 


itself."  ^  Hence  mere  economic  analysis  cannot  be  trusted 
as  a  sufficient  guide  to  the  factors  involved  in  social  progress 
or  decadence.  Economic  factors  like  geographic  factors 
are  necessary  but  not  sufficient  explanations.  Only  the 
fullest  exploration  of  the  depths  of  man's  organic  and  social 
nature  will  yield  a  trustworthy  answer. 

The  conclusion  of  the  matter,  then,  from  the  stand- 
point of  social  polity  seems  to  be  this,  that  in  so  far  as 
economic  influences  have  dominated  human  Ufe  harmfully 
irL  its  upward  struggle,  it  has  been  largely  because  of  a  lack 
of  proper  standards  of  real  value  and  of  a  conscious  aim  and 
a  coherent  plan  for  improvement.  Since  economic  interests 
cut  so  large  a  figure  still  in  human  life,  and  since  economic 
motives  are  only  part  of  an  organic  social  complex  and 
therefore  sensitive  to  pressure  from  other  factors,  it  is  the 
business  of  constructive  statesmanship  and  a  dynamic 
educational  system  to  focus  attention  upon  economic 
passions  and  to  mold  economic  systems  to  fit  a  rational 
social  order.  In  a  word,  economic  life  must  become  means 
and  not  end.  Education  can  make  industry  promote 
human  advance  if  it  will  teach  us  how  to  save  our  energy, 
order  our  time,  concentrate  our  efforts,  rate  real  productiv- 
ity, and  distribute  the  products  of  our  labor  with  such 
equity  and  efficiency  that  we  shall  have  leisure  and  surplus 
energy  for  the  cultivation  of  other  and  equally  imperious 
human  interests.  To  this  process  of  estabhshing  some- 
thing more  nearly  approaching  a  regime  of  social  justice, 
government  and  the  other  agencies  for  social  control  may 
contribute  by  so  regulating  the  productive  energies  of  the 
group  that  dependency  is  eliminated  and  economic  reward 
distributed  according  to  real  contributions  to  social 
strength. 


1^ 


^  John  Dewey,  Atlantic  Monthly,  February,  1916,  p.  252. 


BIOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATIONS 


CHAPTER  XVI 
THE   SELECTIONISTS 

Of  the  three  basic  factors  in  biological  evolution,  namely, 
variability,  selection,  and  transmission,  we  shall  consider 
only  the  second  specifically.  The  discussion  of  the  other 
factors  is  distributed  throughout  these  chapters.  This 
much  might  be  said,  however,  on  the  subject  of  divergence 
or  variability :  variability,  which  we  recognize  as  indispen- 
sable to  any  sort  of  social  life  at  all,  to  say  nothing  of  social 
progress,  is  rendered  infinitely  less  difficult  in  highly  organized 
human  society  than  in  the  sub-human  world. ^  Man's  posi- 
tion of  advantage  comes  through  social  heredity  and  such 
social  institutions  as  capital,  education,  literature,  art.  The 
great  problem  of  social  policy  is  how  to  estimate  what  varia-' 
tions  in  the  germ  plasm  are  socially  valuable  in  the  long 
run,  and  how  to  focus  upon  them  the  forces  of  social 
heredity  in  such  a  way  that  they  may  be  encouraged  and 
preserved. 

For  our  particular  purpose  we  need  go  only  so  far  into 
a  discussion  of  heredity  as  to  analyze  diagrammatically  the 
two  lines  of  heredity  which  converge  in  every  human  in- 
dividual. Social  heredity  is  the  field  of  the  sociologist; 
he  is  only  concerned  with  natural  heredity  in  so  far  as  it  is 
acted  upon  by  and  reacts  upon  the  social  environment  in 
accounting  for   human   behavior.     The   diagram  on  page 

^  See  Galton,  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty,  Everyman's  ed.,  p.  130,  for  a 
very  picturesque  illustration  of  this  point. 

239 


240 


THEORIES   OF  SOCML  PROGRESS 


DIAGRAM  OF  FORCES  CONDITIONING  INDIVIDUAL  BEHAVIOR 


^:^^:^^ci  ii:$t:^^^^: 


SOMATIC 
CHARACTERS 


MENTAL 
CHARACTERS 


ORGANIC  HEREDITY 

(HUMAN  NATURE) 


FOLKWAYS 
PROBLEM  EXPERIENCE 
(human  ACHIEVEMEN  T) 

SOCIAL  HEREDITY 


PHYSICAL 
ENl/IRONMENT 


THE   SELECTIONISTS  241 

240  ought  also  to  throw  some  Hght  upon  the  problem  of 
selection. 

When  we  come  to  speak  of  the  final  factor,  selection, 
and  in  particular  of  progress  through  selection  of  the  fittest 
(that  is,  of  the  most  valuable  germinal  variations),  our 
difficulties  begin.  That  there  is  selection  nobody  can  doubt 
for  a  moment.  Indeed  it  is  the  fundamental  corollary 
to  life  itself.  Without  choice  there  would  be  no  power 
to  ward  off  danger,  to  avoid,  say,  poisonous  foods,  to  select 
desirable  conditions  ;  there  would  be  no  chance  for  conscious 
life ;  for  consciousness  implies  tension,  problems,  suspense, 
the  balancing  up  of  possibiKties,  the  rating  of  values,  hence 
choice  or  selection.  What  is  thus  true  of  the  individual  is 
true  of  the  world  of  life  taken  as  a  whole,  and  of  human 
evolution  as  an  episode  in  it. 

Granting  the  universality  of  the  principle  of  selection, 
shall  we  call  it  "natural  selection"?  What  is  natural 
selection?  Is  there  any  selection  which  is  unnatural? 
Do  we  mean  by  natural  some  power  or  person  outside 
the  world  of  men  which  thrusts  in  its  hand  to  direct  their 
activities  and  to  pick  out  certain  marked  individuals  for  its 
own  purposes?  Is  it  legitimate  to  oppose  "social"  to 
"natural"  selection?  Is  not  society  a  part  of  Nature? 
Are  not  man's  will,  his  likes  and  dislikes,  his  whole  range  of 
activities,  natural?  Again,  what  is  natural  selection 
selecting  for,  and  what  sort  of  things  or  quahties  is  it 
supposed  to  be  interested  in  and  to  choose?  These  are 
questions  trite  enough,  but  they  have  to  be  confronted 
because  people  never  cease  asking  them.  By  way  of  reply 
it  may  be  said,  in  the  first  place,  that  whatever  the  source, 
whether  social  or  extra-social,  all  selection  is  for  life. 
Second,  that  it  is  the  choice  of  certain  specific  qualities 
which  relate  to  the  breadth  or  security  of  life,  or  which 
develop  and  insure  life.     Third,  that  all  selection  is  natural. 


242  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

But  Nature  is  broad  and  includes  an  infinite  number  of 
factors,  of  which  now  one  set  and  now  another  may  play  the 
predominant  role.  By  natural  selection  we  mean  that  more 
or  less  automatic,  unconscious,  and  irrational  process  of 
picking  out  the  winners  in  the  pre-human  and  anthropoid 
stages  of  organized  life,  electing  those  individuals  and  species 
whose  wits  and  bodies  bore  marks  of  superiority  from  the 
standpoints  of  survival  and  development.  As  to  precisely 
what  this  selective  impulse  really  is  science  must  plead 
ignorance,  mystery.  Perhaps  "one  increasing  purpose" 
ran  and  runs  still  throughout  nature ;  and  perhaps  that 
purpose  is  man  and  superman.  Or,  it  may  be  that  by  blind 
chance  and  happy  accident  the  human  species  was  spun 
out  of  its  crude  ancestry.  But  this  much  remains,  that 
until  we  reach  the  distinctively  human  stage,  selection  was 
tremendously  wasteful,  largely  unconscious  and  coercive ; 
that  a  hundred  perhaps  several  hundred  thousand  years 
ago  maximum  racial  selection,  the  terminus  ad  quern  of  the 
natural  process  was  reached.  The  physical  mold  of  man- 
kind was  chosen,  and  certain  norms  of  agihty,  strength, 
wits,  fertility,  and  the  like  were  set  up.^ 

But  this  was  merely  the  starting  point  of  the  social 
process.  The  principle  of  selection  now  begins  to  work  on 
another  plane,  or  to  work  in  other  media.  The  same  old 
workman,  if  you  choose,  but  new  materials.  From  now 
onward  the  center  of  selection  is  more  and  more  shifted 
from  without  to  within  man  himself,  from  passive  adapta- 
tion to  active  self-determination.  With  the  growth  of 
consciousness  the  tendency  is  away  from  irrational  and 
instinctive  choices  to  deliberate  and  rational  selection. 
Man's  wits  have  already  been  roughly  determined  by  the 

^  "The  history  of  human  progress  has  been  mainly  the  history  of  man's 
higher  educability,  the  products  of  which  he  has  projected  on  to  his  environ- 
ment." C.  Lloyd  Morgan,  "Mental  Factors  in  Evolution,"  in  Darwin  and 
Modern  Science,  p.  445. 


THE  SELECTIONISTS  243 

coercive  process  of  the  struggle  for  existence ;  now  he 
turns  those  wits  definitely  to  the  task  of  further  improving 
themselves.  This  is  a  mental,  hence  a  social  process,  and 
while  this  process  has  not  become  altogether  conscious  or 
rational  yet,  it  certainly  is  moving  more  and  more  directly 
toward  rationality  and  deliberation.  Hence  the  student 
of  the  social  sciences  or  the  man  of  affairs  is  concerned 
chiefly  or  altogether  with  selection  in  its  social  aspect.  He 
realizes  that  while  the  principle  of  selection  is  just  as  opera- 
tive as  ever,  it  makes  use  of  new  methods,  new  agents, 
and  new  standards  ;  ^  and  that  these  new  agents  and  stand- 
ards are  social.  He  recognizes  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
but  demands  a  re-definition  of  the  concept,  fittest,  in 
terms  of  "ability  to  survive  by  means  of  useful  powers 
and  qualities."  An  illustration  or  two  will  show  how  the 
concept  of  natural  merges  into  social  selection. 

Take,  let  us  say,  sexual  selection.  While  Wallace 
advanced  somewhat  beyond  Darwin  in  positing  the  impor- 
tance of  sexual  selection,  the  latter  went  far  enough  to  say  : 

"For  my  own  part  I  conclude  that  of  all  the  causes  which 
have  led  to  the  difference  in  external  appearance  between 
the  races  of  man,  and  to  a  certain  extent  between  man  and 
the  lower  animals,  sexual  selection  has  been  by  far  the  most 
efficient."  2 

The  Polar  Eskimo  illustrate  how  the  selective  process 
may  work  by  means  of  competitive  strength  or  valor. 
Commander  Peary  writes  of  them : 

*  Darwin  himself  concluded,  two  years  after  publishing  the  second  edition 
of  his  Descent  of  Man,  that  he  had  overstressed  the  principle  of  natural 
selection.  In  a  letter  some  time  in  1876  he  wrote:  "In  my  opinion  the 
greatest  error  which  I  have  committed,  has  been  not  allowing  sufficient 
weight  to  the  direct  action  of  the  environment,  i.e.,  food,  climate,  etc.,  inde- 
pendently of  natural  selection."     Life  and  Letters,  vol.  iii,  p.  159. 

Huxley  also  with  his  accustomed  clarity  outlined  the  cleavage  between 
nature  and  society  in  the  selective  process  in  his  famous  essay,  "The  Struggle 
for  E.xistence  in  Human  Society,"  Nineteenth  Century,  January,  r^ 

^  Descent  of  Man,  ii,  367. 


244  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

"If  two  men  want  to  marry  the  same  woman  they 
settle  the  question  by  a  trial  of  strength,  and  the  better 
man  has  his  way.  These  struggles  are  not  fights,  as  the 
disputants  are  amiable  :  they  are  simply  tests  of  wrestling, 
or  sometimes  of  pounding  each  other  on  the  arm  to  see 
which  man  can  stand  the  pounding  the  longer."  ^ 

It  is  impossible  to  escape  the  suspicion  that  together  with 
the  wresthng  and  pounding  here  described  there  is  going 
on  a  more  subtle  selection  of  good  nature,  temper,  pride, 
forbearance  and  other  purely  social  qualities.  This  point 
becomes  more  evident  if  we  consider  such  a  sex-selective 
agency  as  dancing.  Deniker  says  :  "It  may  be  presumed 
that  the  alternating  dances  of  men  and  women  were,  at  the 
beginning  of  societies,  a  powerful  aid  to  sexual  selection."  ^ 

Here,  manifestly,  something  more  than  mere  strength  of 
limb,  endurance,  or  length  of  wind  was  involved.  This 
something  must  have  been  what  the  older  psychologists 
called  the  "amiable  qualities." 

It  is  true  that  more  recent  studies  in  biology  tend  some- 
what to  discount  the  supreme  importance  formerly  given 
to  sexual  selection.  Disregarding  the  extreme  and  fatuous 
claims  of  certain  eugenists,  there  is  still  something  to  be 
said  for  it,  however.  Wallace  offered  a  most  provoca- 
tive view  of  the  problem  of  sexual  selection  in  future 
societies.  Woman  is  to  be  the  great  selective  agent. 
He  denies  that  education,  training,  or  surroundings  can 
affect  permanently  the  march  of  human  progress.  Prog- 
ress will  come  as  the  result  (i)  of  continuous  and  perhaps 
increasing  elimination  of  vice,  violence,  and  recklessness 
through  early  destruction  of  those  addicted  to  them ;  and 
(2)  of  the  far  more  important  factor  of  selection  through 
increasing  freedom  and  higher  education  of  women.  That 
is,  women's  taste  in  men  is  to  be  refined.     Hence,  in  spite  of 

^  North  Pole,  59.  2  Races  of  Man,  208. 


THE  SELECTIONISTS  245 

apparent  contradictions,  he  is  forced  to  conclude  that 
"education  has  the  greatest  value  for  the  improvement  of 
mankind  .  .  .  and  that  selection  of  the  fittest  may  be 
insured  by  more  powerful  and  more  effective  agencies  than 
the  destruction  of  the  weak  and  helpless.  ...  It  is  only 
by  a  true  and  perfect  system  of  education  and  the  public 
opinion  which  such  a  system  will  create,  that  the  special 
mode  of  selection  on  which  the  future  of  humanity  depends 
can  be  brought  into  general  action."  ^ 

It  is  highly  illuminating  thus  to  find  that  the  most 
important  factor  in  selection  reduces  in  its  modern  appli- 
cation to  terms  unreservedly  social.  The  process,  if  it  has 
any  significance  and  validity  whatever,  is  no  longer  merely 
natural  or  unconscious,  or  instinctive ;  it  is,  or  rather  is 
to  be,  preeminently  rational.  We  leave  the  matter  in 
its  future  tense  largely  because  sexual  selection  lies  still 
in  the  domain  of  the  conventional ;  the  conventional  is 
rational  only  in  so  far  as  the  mores  are  considered  as  the 
rationalized  precipitate  of  much  cruder  irrational  rule-of- 
thumb  tradition  and  folkways.  A  study,  however  super- 
ficial, of  the  rules  of  mating  in  either  primitive  or  civilized 
groups  reveals  the  power  •  of  codes  of  propriety,  canons 
of  beauty,  pride  of  blood,  the  cult  of  social  position,  class 
cleavages,  differences  in  wealth,  admiration  for  certain  types 
of  achievement,  family  organization,  educational  methods, 
religious  beliefs  and  prejudices,  and  other  forms  of  social 
pressure  in  determining  the  choice  of  mates.  To  rationalize 
sexual  selection  and  make  it  serve  progress  will  mean  to 
revise  the  mores  and  inject  into  them  new  principles.  This 
eugenics  attempts  to  do. 

But  what  of  survival  of  the  fittest?     "The  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  was  not  made  by  man  and  cannot  be 

^  The  Arena,  January,  1892 ;  reprinted  in  his  Studies  Scientific  and  Social^ 
vol.  ii,  pp.  506-8. 


246  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

abrogated  by  man.  We  can  only,  by  interfering  with 
it,  produce  the  survival  of  the  unfittest."  ^  This  is  the 
American  echo  to  English  and  German  selectionism. 
Again,  we  repeat  the  question :  Who  is  the  fittest 
socially?  Long  arms,  swift  legs,  sharp  teeth,  the  billowy 
muscles  of  the  Farnese  Hercules  —  are  these  the  marks  of 
fitness?  When  man  invented  tools  and  other  forms  of 
property  his  days  of  pure  instinctive  or  reflex  action  were 
over.  He  had  leaped  the  bounds  of  the  natural.  Mere 
physical  selection  working  on  his  organs  and  members  was 
checked.  When  once  he  had  a  staff  or  club  he  no  longer 
needed  an  extension  of  his  arm.  Nor  must  he  strengthen 
his  jaw,  his  teeth,  or  his  stomach  when  armed  with 
knife  and  fire ;  nor  grow  fur  or  wool  when  he  learned 
to  stitch  and  weave  his  clothes.  Selection  now  plays 
on  new  instruments  —  man's  wits  and  sentiments. 
Natural  selection  plays  second  fiddle.  IntelHgence  directs 
the  whole  vast  harmony  between  man  and  his  sur- 
roundings. 

Human  progress,  then,  is  a  struggle  of  intelligence, 
the  selection  of  ideas.  The  battle  may  not  be  to  the 
strong,  but  to  the  persistent,  not  to  the  heavy  brain  but  to 
the  agile  mind.  "The  social  type  inherits  the  earth." 
For  example,  the  battle  for  the  enfranchisement  of  women 
is  being  won  in  spite  of  physical  weakness.  Parentheti- 
cally, let  us  say  that  of  all  the  silly  arguments  against 
woman's  suffrage,  the  supposedly  fundamental  and  un- 
answerable argument  that  nationality  rests  on  armed  force 
and  that  woman  is  too  weak  to  bear  arms  is  the  very  silhest. 
As  well  say  that  a  man  cannot  be  president  of  the  United 
States  or  inventor  of  wireless  telegraphy  or  maker  of  war 
munitions  because  he  does  not  measure  eighty-four  feet 
from  tip  to  tip  like  the  Di plodocus  Carnegii  or  carry  a  house 

^  Sumner,  Essay  on  "Sociology,"  in  the  collection  War,  and  other  Essays. 


THE  SELECTIONISTS  247 

on  his  back  like  an  elephant.  Indeed  I  am  not  sure  hut 
that  I  agree  with  M.  Jules  Gaudard's  thesis  that  humble 
infirmity  is  the  most  powerful  force  for  scientific  and 
general  progress.'  One  need  not  limit  his  argument  for 
the  power  of  the  weak  and  humble  to  the  four  gospels  or  to 
St.  Paul's  first  epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  The  physical 
unite  with  the  social  sciences  in  demonstrating  the  cumula- 
tive and  irresistible  force  of  infinitesimal  causes  repeated, 
persistent,  and  consciously  concerted.  How,  for  example, 
have  we  higher  animals  come  by  our  many-celled  bodies, 
while  our  humblest  ancestors  were  only  one-celled? 
Through  weakness  somewhere  in  that  ancestral  chain, 
biologists  suggest.     Thomson  and  Geddes  say : 

"We  know  of  some  simple  units  that  have  a  habit  of 
coalescing  into  composite  masses,  of  others  in  which  the 
nucleus  divides  over  and  over  again  within  the  cell  so  that 
the  multi-nucleate  organisms  are  formed,  and  of  others  again 
that  break  their  definition,  and  do  their  best  to  get  beyond 
the  unicellular  state,  by  forming  loose  colonies.  It  was 
probably  in  the  third  of  these  ways  that  body-making 
began.  Certain  simple  organisms,  unable  fully  to  complete 
that  division  into  two  or  more  separate  units  which  nor- 
mally occurs  at  the  limit  of  growth,  bridged  what  Agassiz 
called  "the  greatest  gulf  in  organic  nature."  It  was 
perhaps  through  some  weakness  that  the  daughter-units, 
formed  by  division  of  the  mother-cell,  remained  associated, 
instead  of  drifting  apart  in  individual  completeness.  But 
out  of  this  weakness  —  if  weakness  —  strength  arose,  the 
strength  of  animals  with  a  body."  ^ 

^  J.  Gaudard,  Lafoi  par  Vhumilile  011  la  force  par  rinfirmite,  1912.  John 
Burroughs,  in  a  suggestive  article,  "The  Still  Small  Voice  "  {Atl.  Mo.,  Mar. 
1916),  argues  from  scientific  grounds  that  the  most  potent  and  beneficent 
forces  are  stillest. 

'^Evolution,  86-7.  Nietzsche,  with  his  inveterate  apotheosis  of  the 
individual  as  against  the  group,  came  to  doubt  if  natural  selection  really  ever 
favored  the  strong,  for  the  grouped  species  rather  than  the  superior  individual 
survived.  See  citations  from  his  Will  to  Power  in  Salter,  Intcrnl.  Jour. 
Ethics,  25  :  396. 


248  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Weakness  again  in  our  anthropoid  ancestors  begot  that 
habit  of  mutual  dependence  and  concerted  action  which 
has  made  Man  and  enabled  him  to  lord  it  over  every  other 
animal. 

Progress  is  effected,  we  said,  by  selection  of  wits  and 
sentiments.  Perhaps  the  order  should  be  reversed.  For 
I  believe  that  in  the  task  of  creating  Humanity  through 
checking  natural  selection,  more  has  been  allotted  to  the 
sentiments  than  to  any  other  element  in  human  nature. 
We  must  frankly  face  the  fact  that  the  whole  meaning  of 
civilization  has  been  won  at  the  expense  of  raw  physical 
selection.  Spencer,  Sumner,  and  the  rest  of  the  sturdy 
individualists  may  decry  interference  with  natural  selec- 
tion and  threaten  us  with  all  manner  of  dire  consequences 
if  we  do.  The  fact  remains  that  Spencer,  Sumner,  and  all 
their  contemporaries  were  permitted  to  live  out  their 
comparatively  peaceful  and  comfortable  lives  precisely 
because  their  forbears  had  interfered  (unscientifically, 
perilously,  it  may  be !)  with  the  brute  struggle  which  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  connotes.  It  was  perhaps  because  men 
chose  to  chase  after  illusions.  It  was  certainly  because 
human  sentiments  had  interposed.  It  was  because  a 
sense  of  care,  a  sentiment  of  responsibility,  of  common 
defense,  an  understanding  of  social  unity,  were  generated. 
According  to  Wallace,  these  sentiments  have  to  some  extent 
been  antagonistic  to  physical  and  even  intellectual  race- 
improvement  ;  but  they  have  improved  us  morally  by  the 
continuous  development  of  the  characteristic  and  crowning 
grace  of  our  human,  as  distinguished  from  our  animal  nature. 
Darwin  also  held  that  while  man  is  the  only  animal  that 
allows  its  poorest  to  propagate,  still  it  is  in  obedience  to  the 
instinct  of  sympathy.  ''Nor  could  we  check  our  sym- 
pathy," says  he,  "if  so  urged  by  hard  reason,  without 
deterioration  in  the  noblest  part  of  our  nature ;  ...  if 


THE  SELECTIONISTS  249 

we  were  intentionally  to  neglect  the  weak  and  helpless,  it 
could  only,  be  for  a  contingent  benefit,  with  a  certain  and 
great  present  evil."  ^ 

But  even  granting  the  possibility  of  losses  through  the 
policy  of  social  sympathy,  there  may  easily  be  cases  where 
preservation  of  the  weak  does  not  lower  the  general  level 
of  race  fitness.  Why  should  not  the  increased  science 
and  care  devoted  to  the  weak  and  sickly  also  yield  as  by- 
products better  means  of  insuring  health,  education,  and 
general  fitness  to  the  strong?  The  care  of  the  diseased 
has  led  recently  to  such  organizations  as  the  Life  Extension 
Society,  devoted  primarily  to  the  benefit  of  the  eminently 
fit,  and  to  a  general  demand  for  health  conservation. 
The  legislation  growing  out  of  the  study  of  factory  con- 
ditions on  behalf  of  women  and  children  has  flowered  in 
scientific  management  and  industrial  hygiene  for  all 
workers.  Medical  care  of  the  sexually  diseased  leads  up  to 
general  movements  for  rational  sex  prophylaxis.  Care  of 
the  insane  develops  into  broader  preventive  agencies  like  the 
Society  for  Mental  Hygiene.  Signora  Montessori's  methods 
of  educating  normal  children  proceed  naturally  out  of  her 
study  of  educational  methods  for  defectives.  While  no 
sane  person  would  argue  that  nature  or  human  society  ought 
to  create  pathological  types  for  the  direct  purpose  of  offering 
laboratory  materials  or  drawing  out  our  sympathies,^  and 
while  the  most  elementary  prudence  and  sympathy  urge 

^  A.  R.  Wallace,  "  Human  Selection,"  Fortnightly  Review,  September, 
1890;  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  i,  162. 

^  I  have  heard  men  deliberately  arguing  for  the  increase  of  mental  and 
bodily  defectives,  the  allowing  them  to  roam  at  large  and  to  propagate  their 
kind  as  a  stimulus  to  our  sentiments,  which  would  lapse  and  grow  cold  if  we 
developed  a  perfect  race.  Sympathy  that  needs  such  coarse,  strong  food 
may  hardly  be  worth  the  price !  It  seems  to  proceed  from  the  same  crass 
romanticism  that  urges  men  like  a  certain  New  York  Catholic  publicist  to 
oppose  birth  control  on  the  ground  that  it  is  better  even  to  be  born  an  idiot 
than  not  to  be  born  at  all. 


250  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  prevention  of  such  wreckage,  yet  it  is  equally  obvious 
that  mere  extermination  of  those  types  or  passive  tolerance 
of  them  in  no  way  meets  the  problem. 

Is  this  science  or  sentimentahty  ?  Herbert  Spencer 
cried  out  vehemently  that  "fostering  the  good-for-nothing 
at  the  expense  of  the  good  is  an  extreme  cruelty."  But  I 
suspect  that  when  he  wrote  that,  Spencer  was  manifesting 
the  personality  of  a  very  cranky  dyspeptic  philosopher. 
He  was  imagining  a  sort  of  pseudo-science  which  afflicted 
more  than  one  of  his  generation  with  the  disease  of  '  Social 
Darwinism.'  To  the  contrary,  may  not  these  sentiments  of 
pity,  of  tolerance,  of  amelioration,  be  taken  in  the  strictest 
scientific  sense  as  elements  in  a  rational  social  prophylaxis  ? 
For  does  not  the  actual  progress  of  mankind  depend  far 
more  on  the  survival  of  the  best,  than  on  the  extermination 
of  the  good-for-nothing?  Professor  Hobhouse  maintains 
that  society  has  always  progressed  in  spite  of  the  higher 
fertility  of  the  unfit,  and  argues  that  this  is  only  one  sign 
among  others  of  the  general  truth  of  the  view  that  human 
progress  is  social  and  not  racial.^ 

At  this  point  other  bitter  corollaries  to  the  selectionist 
theory  must  be  faced.  Spencer  held  that  poverty  is  an 
inevitable  incident  of  the  working  of  natural  selection  in 
social  evolution. 2  Professor  Giddings  presents  a  bill 
of  miseries  in  which  poverty  and  suffering,  crime,  suicide, 
insanity  and  vagabondage  are  gloomy  items  in  the  costs  of 
progress.^  As  we  indicated  in  an  earlier  chapter,  the  notion 
of  costs  of  progress  must  be  carefully  scrutinized  to  be  sure 
that  real  progress  is  at  stake,  and  not  mere  social  change  or 
even  decadence.  To  Mr.  Kidd  the  requisites  for  human 
progress   are  class   struggle  within   the  group,   persistent 

^  "The  Value  and  Limitations  of  Eugenics,"  Sociological  Review,  4:  297. 
^  See,  e.g.,  The  Man  versus  the  State  (N.  Y.,  1888),  pp.  67-8. 
^  Democracy  and  Empire,  chap.  v. 


THE   SELECTIONISTS  251 

over-population,  selection  by  death  and  subjection,  and  a 
constant  mass  of  poverty  and  misery.^     The  lower  and 
miserable  classes  must  without  reasoning  accept  their  lot. 
It  is  their  cosmic  destiny.     To  reason  about  it  and  put  an 
end  to  class  strife  and  poverty  would  put  an  end  to  progress. 
This  forsooth  is  the  wisdom  of  the  foolish.     Mr.    Kidd 
forgets  that  the  'fittest'  are  not  thus  selected.     Nor  is  the 
real  course  of  selection  now  natural ;   it  is  societal,  through 
law,  convention,  property,  medical  skill,  religion,  education, 
and  kindred  social  achievements.     He  moreover  assumes 
the  hereditary  transmission  of  selected  qualities  and  also 
the  monopoly  of  superior  talent  by  the  upper  classes  — 
two  rather  shaky  foundations  for  an  edifice  of  social  theory. 
One  may  grant  easily  enough  that  suffering  generally 
accompanies  social  change,   though  perhaps  not  always. 
To  plunge  into  the  new  and  untried  means  the  pangs  of 
uncertainty,  doubt  and  dread  even  more  than  the  gnawing 
of   hunger.     There   are   also,   however,    certain    thrills   of 
anticipation.     Fear  itself  may  have  its  pleasurable  side. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  presence  and  mission  of  pain  in 
evolution  have  been  exaggerated.     But  why  should  poverty 
as  a  form  of  suffering  be  conceived  as  the  inevitable  cost  of 
social  change?     Poverty,  some  men  say,  is  a  multiple  of 
three  factors,  stingy  nature,  ineffective  economic  technique, 
and  personal  defect;    others  would  add  a  fourth,  over- 
population, corollary  to  the  first  three.     Twentieth  century 
economists  are  beginning,  however,  to  talk  openly  and  con- 
fidently of  abolishing  poverty.^    They  claim  that  Nature  is 
just  as  generous  as  man  cares  to  make  her ;   that  the  world 

1  Social  Evolution,  chap.  iii. 

2  See,  to  take  only  two  notable  examples,  Hollander,  The  Abolition  of 
Poverty;  Withers,  Poverty  and  Waste.  I  should  like  to  add  Kropotkin's 
stimulating  little  book,  Fields,  Factories,  and  Workshops.  Professors  Irving 
Fisher,  E.  T.  Devine,  and  Simon  Patten  also  are  contributing  to  this  economic 
optimism. 


252  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

has  already  entered  an  era  of  economic  surplus ;  and  point 
out  certain  industrial  readjustments,  particularly  in  the 
fields  of  conservation  and  distribution,  which  will  refute 
the  old  theory  of  chronic  economic  deficit.  But  would  not 
the  abolition  of  poverty  let  loose  all  the  forces  of  counter- 
selection  and  defeat  the  process  of  selecting  the  fit?  Not 
necessarily.  Much  would  depend  upon  the  social  code  by 
which  the  methods  of  obtaining,  distributing,  and  holding 
wealth  are  directed.  On  the  other  hand,  would  abrogation 
of  the  current  property  code,  say,  by  abolition  of  inheritance, 
as  Mr.  Carnegie  suggests,  plunge  us  again  into  the  depths 
of  natural  selection?  Again,  no.  We  should  simply  be 
confronted  with  a  substitution  of  one  standard  of  social 
selection  for  another. 

The  theory  connecting  over-population  and  progress 
runs  somewhat  like  this :  over-fecundity  is  necessary  to 
heighten  the  struggle  for  existence  under  natural  selection, 
by  increasing  the  number  of  contestants  and  angles  of 
conflict ;  but  over-fecundity  means  pressure  upon  the  means 
of  subsistence;  in  other  words,  poverty,  food-shortage, 
even  starvation,  are  modes  of  the  selective  process.  If  we 
cast  overboard  the  concept  of  social  selection  and  hark  back 
to  purely  natural  selection,  such  a  theory  may  be  valid. 
But  selection  is  no  longer  dependent  upon  over-fecundity. 
Modern  means  of  communication  and  transport  for  men, 
goods,  and  ideas  make  possible  a  greater  number  of  contacts, 
conflicts  if  you  choose,  than  were  possible  in  earlier  societies. 
This  permits  a  larger  number  of  clashes  and  variations. 
That  is,  a  given  unit  of  population  has  a  larger  chance  of 
happy  variation  and  testing  than  ever  before.  This  reduces 
the  necessity  for  large  populations  to  provide  a  wide  area 
for  selection.  Hence  whatever  theoretical  foundation  selec- 
tion ever  had  in  over-fecundity  and  food-shortage,  now 
crumbles  away.     Likewise  the  inference  that  poverty  is 


THE  SELECTIONISTS  253 

inherent  in  the  selective  process  also  falls.  Selection  for 
progress  must  state  itself  in  other  terms  than  natural 
parsimony  and  an  excessive  birth-rate. 

The  real  selective  forces  in  human  society,  then,  are 
social,  generated  out  of  the  very  heart  of  group  hfe  itself, 
from  the  exigencies  imposed  by  the  communal  struggle  for 
existence.  Chief  among  these  selective  forces  are  to  be 
rated  property,  the  family,  the  institution  of  saving,  lan- 
guage (the  means  of  handing  on  past  records  of  successful 
selection),  the  mores  (the  philosophy  of  successful  social 
selection),  religion  (as  the  consecrator  of  successful  selec- 
tions), education  (as  the  means  of  developing  and  refining 
means  and  standards  of  selection). 

As  an  illustration  of  how  rehgion  works  in  selection,  I 
need  only  call  to  mind  the  attitude  of  early  Christianity  to- 
ward marriage  and  self-perpetuation.  Asceticism,  celibacy, 
and  the  extreme  cult  of  virginity  were  a  very  consider- 
able influence  in  determining  the  population  type  of  early 
and  middle  age  Christian  centuries.  That  they  are  believed 
still  to  do  so  is  evidenced  by  the  propaganda  of  anti- 
clericalists  for  a  married  clergy  and  abolition  of  celibate 
nunneries  in  countries  with  an  extremely  low  birth-rate. 
The  church  in  the  middle  ages,  through  its  chase  of  heretics 
and  its  Inquisition,  selected  in  the  direction  of  dead- 
levehsm  in  religion,  and  against  that  variety  which  is 
absolutely  essential  to  social  health.  The  obverse  of  this 
condition  appears  in  the  maxim  that  the  more  heretics  a 
society  includes  the  more  alive  it  is.  But  the  religious  selec- 
tion made  itself  felt  to  no  inconsiderable  degree  also  in  the 
economic  realm.  Modern  France  has  not  yet  recovered 
from  the  Dragonnades  of  Louis  XIV  which  drove  out 
thousands  of  her  most  industrious  and  skillful  artisans  and 
small  manufacturers,  the  Huguenot  textile  workers.  Spain 
is  trying  to  entice  back  to  an  impoverished  land  the  Ladinos 


254  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

(Spanish  Jews)  which  her  narrow  policy  of  anti-Semitism 
and  anti-everything  but  fifteenth  century  Spanish  Cathol- 
icism had  driven  to  European  Turkey  and  thereabouts.^ 

Education  has  not  always  been  recognized  as  a  very 
significant  selective  agency.  Yet  it  is  fundamental  to  the 
whole  process  of  social  selection.  Plato  saw  this,  and  the 
Republic,  which  is  little  else  than  a  treatise  on  rational  social 
selection,  is  for  that  reason  avowedly  an  educational  text 
of  highest  rank.  His  whole  system  of  eugenics  and  govern- 
ors and  classes  rests  on  a  definite  and  conscious  policy  of 
rigid  education.  The  other  great  Utopists  who  succeeded 
him  lay  under  the  same  unavoidable  necessity  of  connect- 
ing up  their  eugenic  schemes  with  educational  policies. 
Modern  scientists  have  caught  up  the  same  thread  of  ideas. 
Paul  Broca,  the  great  anthropologist,  once  wrote : 

"Education  in  all  its  forms  is  the  intelligent  force  which 
enables  society  to  improve  the  race  by  struggling  against 
the  rude  processes  of  natural  selection.  Add  to  it  just  the 
institutions  that  permit  each  individual  to  obtain  a  position 
commensurate  with  his  worth  and  you  will  have  done  more 
for  the  race  than  the  most  pitiless  natural  selection  could 
ever  do."  ^ 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  science  of  society  has  not 
developed  sufficiently  yet  to  be  able  to  say  with  precision 
how  education  may  be  applied  to  public  opinion  or  the  mores 
in  such  a  way  as  to  act  as  the  predominant  selective  and 
sanative  force.  That  is  perhaps  sociology's  most  pressing 
task  in  this  stage  of  the  science.  But  an  answer  must 
come,  will  come.     The  church  dominated  education  in  the 

1  See  The  Survey,  April  26,  1913,  pp.  136-8.  On  the  general  topic  of 
selection  by  persecution,  see  Galton,  Hereditary  Genius,  359 ;  Lecky,  His- 
tory of  England  in  the  i8th  Century,  \,  188 ;  Smiles,  The  Huguenots  in  England 
arid  Ireland,  Preface,  pp.  vii,  64 ;  Motley,  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  ii,  389 ; 
Weiss,  History  of  French  Protestant  Refugees,  Preface,  p.  v. 

^  Quoted  in  Revue  Scientifique,  36  :  760,  Dec.  12,  1885. 


THE  SELECTIONISTS  255 

middle  ages,  and  its  doctrines  of  monasticism,  celibacy,  pov- 
erty, and  resignation  shaped  to  a  great  degree  the  thought 
and  activities  of  Europe.  Only  such  titanic  upheavals  as 
the  discovery  of  America  and  the  Protestant  Reformation 
could  burst  the  molds  which  this  selective  agency  had  laid 
for  her  children.  The  teachings  of  Malthus  and  the  Neo- 
Malthusians  —  a  conscious  educational  propaganda  —  are 
seriously  to  be  reckoned  as  among  the  causes  of  the  falling 
birth-rate  during  the  past  forty  years. ^  The  definite  teach- 
ing of  individual  success  as  an  ideal  has  contributed  to  the 
same  end.  The  vision  of  being  president  of  the  United 
States  or  the  more  humble  vision  of  owning  a  shop  or  a 
home,  when  coupled  with  the  teacher's  assurance  that  these 
things  are  possible  to  everybody,  makes  the  workingman 
calculate  the  denominator  —  size  of  family,  which  will 
adjust  itself  properly  to  his  numerator  —  income,  and  secure 
a  substantial  fraction  —  standard  of  living.  Whether  this 
is  better  than  the  uncalculating  life  of  the  beast,  the  candid 
reader  must  decide.  There  may  be  room  for  argument,  but 
there  can  be  no  question  that  such  a  gospel  of  success 
taught  by  a  mighty  system  of  public  schools  reenforced  by 
compulsory  attendance  is  bound  to  express  itself  in  the 
population  type. 

From  all  this  it  would  appear  that  the  business  of  the 
social  sciences  and  particularly  of  sociology  is  to  determine 
what  is  socially  most  worth  while,  and  to  propagate  by 
education  an  appreciation  of  these  social  values.  Thus  will 
we  raise  the  principle  of  selection  to  the  plane  of  complete 
rationahty.  Thus  will  man  win  his  highest  freedom.  From 
the  standpoint  of  biology  this  means  the  conservation  of  the 
physical  mold  already  won  by  humanity  through  natural 
selection.  From  the  standpoint  of  sociology  it  means- 
adding  such  social  sanctions  as  may  be  necessary  to  main- 
^  See  J.  A.  Field,  The  Survey,  Feb.  19,  1916,  p.  600. 


256  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

tain  biological  fitness  at  its  present  high-water  mark ;  but 
it  means  even  more  clearly  the  selection  of  sanctions  that 
are  not  inconsistent  with  the  constant  refining  of  that  social 
type  which  will  continue  to  inherit  the  earth.  Perhaps  all 
these  ends  and  means  might  be  summarized  under  the  term 
'positive  eugenics.' 


CHAPTER   XVII 
THE  EUGENISTS 

By  all  odds  eugenics  is  the  most  popular  phase  of  the 
selection  question  under  discussion  in  this  generation. 
Since  so  much  misconception  and  utter  nonsense  are 
current  regarding  the  aim  and  methods  of  eugenics,  and 
since  its  methods  bear  so  intimately  upon  the  whole  subject 
of  conscious  social  progress,  a  brief  excursion  into  its  field 
is  unavoidable. 

What  is  eugenics?  Sir  Francis  Gal  ton,  the  inventor 
of  the  term,  defined  it  at  one  time  as  the  "science  which 
deals  with  all  influences  that  improve  the  inborn  qualities 
of  a  race  ;  also  with  those  that  develop  them  to  the  utmost 
advantage";  and  later  as  "the  science  which  deals  with 
those  social  agencies  that  influence,  mentally  or  physically, 
the  racial  qualities  of  future  generations"  ;  still  later  as  the 
"study  of  the  agencies  under  social  control  that  may  im- 
prove or  impair  the  racial  qualities  of  future  generations 
either  physically  or  mentally."  Dr.  Saleeby,  one  of  the 
foremost  English  eugenists,  defines  it  succinctly  if  not  con- 
vincingly as  "selection  for  parenthood,  not  selection  for 
life."  "^~ 

It  is  obvious  that  these  definitions  are  vague,  that  they 
are  not  entirely  consistent,  and  that  they  deal  with  most 
uncertain  quantities.  What,  for  instance,  are  the  "racial 
qualities"  to  be  seized  upon  eugenically?  Are  they  social 
types  or  race  types  or  germinal  types  ?  Can  there  be  any 
s  257 


258  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

selection  for  parenthood  that  is  not  preeminently  selection 
for  life?  Is  this  ''science"  coextensive  with  that  whole 
process  we  call  social  selection  ?  It  is  to  be  devoutly  hoped 
that  a  science  to  guide  social  selection  may  be  developed. 
But  whether  eugenics  meets  that  need  does  not  by  any 
means  yet  appear.  Prince  Kropotkin  hit  off  the  situation 
very  wittily  by  remarking  that  it  is  not  a  real  science,  but 
the  ideas,  generalities,  and  desires  of  a  few  people. 

The  nascent  science  has  suffered  from  over-zealous  propa- 
gandists, with  the  embarrassing  result  that  popular  usage 
plays  so  fast  and  loose  with  the  term  "eugenics"  that  it 
has  come  to  mean  anything  from  general  hygiene  and  infant 
welfare  to  evolution  and  the  control  of  venereal  disease. 
It  has  also  suffered  from  over-statement  as  to  its  present 
command  of  facts  and  methods.  Unfortunately,  among  the 
eugenists  are  numbered  some  unblushingly  assured  souls. 
One  of  them  does  not  hesitate  to  aver  that  the  "individuals 
have  the  power  to  improve  th^race,  but  not  the  knowledge 
what  to  do.  We  students  of  genetics  possess  the  knowledge 
but  not  the  power ;  and  the  great  hope  lies  in  the  dissem- 
ination of  our  knowledge  among  the  people  at  large."  ^ 
It  is  a  testimonial  to  the  strength  of  the  eugenics  cause 
itself  that  it  is  able  to  make  headway  in  spite  of  such  rash 
followers.  May  it  not  have  been  a  premonition  of  just  such 
exaggerations  that  led  Galton  towards  the  end  of  his  life 
to  fear  that  the  new  science  would  do  more  harm  than  good  ? 

As  Galton's  third  definition  clearly  shows,  eugenics  has 
nothing  to  do  with  natural  selection.  It  is  limited,  Pro- 
fessor Johnson  insists,^  simply  and  solely  to  "the  Galtonian 
concept  of  the  science  and  art  of  the  control  of  human 
germinal  characteristics."  While  some  eugenists  contend 
that  their  science  is  bound  to  become  a  very  much  larger, 

'  A.  G.  Bell,  Joitrnal  of  Heredity,  January,  19 14. 
^  Amcr.  Jour.  Sociology,  20:  103. 


THE  EUGENISTS  259 

more  complex  and  more  difficult  matter  than  Galton  fore- 
casted/ yet  there  is  substantial  agreement  that  they  are  not 
trying  to  interfere  with  nor  improve  on  nature.  They 
merely  strive  to  avail  themselves  of  natural  processes  for 
high  social  purposes ;  that  is,  they  aim  at  conscious  social 
progress  through  biological  methods.  Biology  is  to  become 
a  leading  partner  with  sociology  in  social  improvement. 
Sometimes,  it  is  true,  eugenics,  and  for  that  matter  biology 
itself,  would  appear  to  be  attempting  to  assume  a  sort  of 
rough  and  ready  guardianship  over  a  group  of  toddhng 
infant  wards,  the  social  sciences.  But,  on  the  whole, 
eugenics  cannot  be  accused  of  opposing  social  reform, 
except  so  far  as  it  allows  the  unfit  to  multiply.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  eugenists  hold  that  selective  breeding  will 
relieve  the  social  reformer  of  most  of  his  work. 

Eugenists  are  not  by  any  means  so  nearly  at  one  among 
themselves  on  the  score  of  methods.  .  A  eugenist  parlia- 
ment would  look  much  like  any  continental  legislature 
with  its  Right,  Left,  Center,  Conservatives,  Ultramontanes 
and  Radicals.  But,  as  so  often  happens,  their  differences 
are  largely  a  matter  of  emphasis.  A  certain  common  policy 
is  discernible.  That  policy  is,  to  be  sure,  negative  —  the 
extirpating  of  the  unfit.  Dr.  C.  B.  Davenport's  "proper 
program  for  elimination  of  the  unfit "  is  typical.  It  includes 
"segregation  of  the  feebleminded,  epileptic,  insane,  heredi- 
tary criminals  and  prostitutes  throughout  the  reproductive 
period  and  the  education  of  the  more  normal  people  as  to 
fit  and  unfit  matings."^ 

One  end  of  the  eugenist's  program  apparently  touches 
that  of  Malthus  and  his  followers,  Place,  Owen,  Bentham 
and  the  two  Mills,  with  their  preaching  of  self-restraint  to 
the  poor.     John   Stuart   Mill  expressed   this   attitude  in 

'  See,  for  example,  Saleeby,  Forum,  April,  1914. 
^  Heredity  in  Relation  to  Eugenics,  259. 


26o  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

declaring  that  "little  improvement  can  be  expected  in 
morality  until  the  producing  of  large  families  is  regarded 
with  the  same  feelings  as  drunkenness  or  any  other  physical 
excess."  ^  Throughout  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  sporadic  attempts  were  made  to  rouse  English 
public  opinion  to  a  sense  of  its  duty  to  check  the  increase 
of  weaker  classes  in  the  population.  Drysdale,  Bradlaugh, 
and  Mrs.  Besant  preached  contraception.  Their  ill- 
advised  prosecution  by  certain  self-appointed  watch-dogs 
over  public  morality  simply  added  fuel  to  the  otherwise 
feeble  flame  of  public  interest  in  birth  control.  A  theory  of 
political  economy  threatened  to  become  a  religion  with  its 
quota  of  martyrs. 

The  hitch,  however,  lay  then  and  still  lies  in  the  proper 
means  for  carrying  out  this  policy  of  limitation.  The 
means  proposed,  marriage  restriction,  voluntary  celibacy, 
contraception  or  self-restraint,  segregation,  sterilization, 
are  all  of  them  more  or  less  open  to  serious  objections. 
Marriage  restrictions  are  notoriously  ineffective.  Whole- 
sale segregation  is  too  expensive  to  appeal  to  the  tax-payer. 
Sterilization,  particularly  of  feebleminded  women,  would 
prevent  reproduction  but  would  not  protect  them  from 
abuse,  and  might  induce  a  stolid  complacency  in  police, 
courts,  and  the  general  public  that  would  preclude  ade- 
quate attention  to  these  victims  of  lust.  Voluntary  celi- 
bacy and  self-restraint  are  not  to  be  expected  from  the 
feebler,  less  resistant  members  of  society.  But  all  of  these 
principles,  if  used  with  discretion,  might  serve  effectively 
as  negative  means. 

Need  we  go  so  far,  however,  as  to  assume  that  the  future 
of  civilization  and  race  health  can  only  be  accomplished  by 
wholesale   extirpation?     A   group   of   American   genetists 

^  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  4th  ed.,  Vol.  I,  Bk.  II,  chap,  xiii, 
p.  448,  note. 


THE  EUGENISTS  261 

representing  the  Breeders'  Association  are  accused  of 
meditating  a  monstrous  scheme  to  sterilize  the  entire 
lower  one-tenth  of  our  population  from  generation  to 
generation.^  The  charge  is  not  quite  justified,  however. 
The  committee  report  upon  which  the  charge  is  based  was 
published  as  Bulletin  lo-A  of  the  Eugenics  Record  Office. 
While  it  did  not  say  in  so  many  words  what  it  is  accused 
of  saying,  yet  it  is  easy  to  see  how  ambiguity  might  creep 
in.     Here  are  its  actual  words : 

''For  the  purposes  of  eugenical  study  and  in  working  out 
a  policy  of  elimination,  it  seems  fair  to  estimate  the  anti- 
social varieties  of  the  American  people  at  ten  per  cent,  of 
the  total  population ;  but  eveh  this  is  arbitrary.  No 
matter  in  what  stage  of  racial  progress  a  people  may  be,  it 
will  always  be  desirable  in  the  interests  of  still  further 
advancement  to  cut  off  the  lowest  levels  and  to  encourage 
high  fecundity  among  the  more  gifted." 

The  chief  source  of  misconception  lies  obviously  enough 
in  the  phrase  "to  cut  off  "  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  means  for 
elimination.  On  this  point  the  committee  was  explicit. 
The  means  recommended,  in  the  order  of  their  importance, 
were  chiefly  three :  (i)  Segregation  for  life  or  during  the 
reproductive  period ;  this  would  require  a  progressive  in- 
crease in  institutional  capacity,  so  that  by  1980  custodial 
care  could  be  provided  for  1500  persons  out  of  every  100,000 
of  the  general  population.  (2)  Sterilization  as  a  purely 
supplementary  policy,  to  reach,  prior  to  their  release,  all 
inmates  of  institutions  supported  wholly  or  in  part  by 
public  funds,  who  are  marked  by  "undesirable  hereditary 
potentialities";  beginning  with  approximately  80  persons 
per  year  per  100,000  of  the  general  population,  and  pro- 

^  See  the  remarks  of  Mr.  Charles  Boston  of  the  New  York  Bar  in  the 
Journal  of  Criminal  Law  and  Criminology,  January,  1915;  also  his  annual 
address  before  the  1914  meeting  of  the  American  Association  for  Medical 
Jurisprudence,  reprinted  in  the  Medical  Times  (New  York),  March,  1915. 


262  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

/ 
gressing  to  150  per  year  in  1980.     (3)  The  encouragement 

of  proper  matings.  Polygamy  among  the  "fit,"  euthanasia, 
and  other  devices  were  rejected  as  out  of  the  question.^ 
This  program  itself  is  on  the  whole  less  shocking  than  the 
pseudo-facts  upon  which  it  is  based.  We  shall  need  more 
convincing  evidence  that  one-tenth  of  us  are  hopelessly 
misfits  before  embarking  too  gaily  upon  this  quest  of  the 
absolute  —  progressive  race  health.  And  we  shall  want  a 
very  explicit  definition  of  "undesirable  hereditary  poten- 
tiahties,"  before  legislators  and  courts  and  schools  and  the 
mores  can  be  expected  to  sanction  ^uch  a  program. 

After  all  will  mere  extinction  of  the  known  defectives 
touch  the  core  of  the  eugenics  problem  ?  Not  at  all.  In- 
deed, some  critics  ^  hold  that  negative  eugenics  is  not 
eugenics  at  all.  The  defectives  who  would  thus  be  eugeni- 
cally  exiled,  so  to  speak,  constitute  but  a  tiny  fraction  of 
society,  only  one-half  of  one  per  cent.  But  suppose  one 
per  cent,  were  negatived  by  eugenics.  What  of  the  nearly 
ninety-nine  per  •  cent,  of  merely  average  normal  people  ? 
Most  of  them,  if  we  judge  by  income  and  ownership  of 
property,  are  weak  and  not  very  solid  timber  for  a  sound 
society.  Are  we  a  degenerate  lot?  Is  our  race  going  to 
seed?  A  good  deal  of  popular  excitement  in  England 
caused  by  the  many  rejections  of  recruits  for  the  Boer  War, 
crystallized  in  the  Duke  of  Devonshire's  committee  to 
report  on  physical  deterioration  in  1903.  Their  report  in 
three  volumes  appeared  the  year  following.  While  it 
noted  incontestable  evidences  of  degeneracy,  it  found 
nothing  to  warrant  a  belief  in  general  and  progressive  de- 
terioration. Dr.  Eichholz  (of  the  committee)  affirmed 
that  there  was  every  reason  to  anticipate  a  rapid  physical 
Improvement   as   soon   as    exterior    conditions   improved. 

^  Loc.  ciL,  pp.  15,  46-61. 

2  For  example,  H.  S.  Skelton,  Contcmp.  Review,  January,  1915,  pp.  105-12. 


THE  EUGENISTS  263 

Among  these  he  inckided  bad  housing,  filth,  drunkenness, 
poor  food  and  clothing,  crowding,  slack  domestic  manage- 
ment. The  English  race  was  sound,  but  English  social 
arrangements  diseased.  The  remedy  lay  not  in  breeding  and 
scientific  pedigrees,  but  in  such  humble  social  prescriptions 
as  fighting  alcoholism,  teaching  temperance,  interdicting 
the  sale  of  tobacco  to  minors  under  sixteen,  organization  of 
school  corps,  development  of  playgrounds,  and  opening  of 
municipal  milk  depots  to  cut  down  infant  mortality. 

From  Germany  also  comes  evidence  that  not  physical 
but  social  heredity  is  responsible  for  degeneration  among 
civilized  peoples.  Dr.  Fahlbeck  finds  in  increasing  wealth, 
changes  in  the  status  of  women,  disintegration  of  religious 
and  philosophical  ideals,  etc.,  these  deteriorating  factors.^ 
One  may  take  issue  with  him  on  certain  points,  for  example, 
the  status  of  women  ;  but  his  general  argument  for  direct- 
ing attention  to  the  social  factors  in  degeneracy  is  sound. 
This  is  a  well-recognized  principle  in  modern  medicine. 
No  first-rate  doctor  nowadays  attemps  to  treat  a  case 
without  considering  its  sociological  bearings.  This  runs 
clear  through  from  diagnosis  to  prognosis  and  after-care. 
Sociological  medicine  is  recognized  even  to  the  point  of 
having  its  own  regular  periodical  literature.  The  alienists, 
too,  have  fallen  into  line,  and  begin  to  urge  .the  study  of 
'social  misery'  as  a  cause  of  mental  defect. 

The  protection  of  the  disinherited  and  care  of  the 
unfit  need  not  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  rational  eugenics. 
Should  we  not  include  purposive  breeding?  This  is,  of 
course,  not  a  new  idea.  Long  before  Plato,  primitive 
peoples  are  presumed  to  have  had  some  eugenic  notions. 
I  doubt  seriously  if  eugenics  had  anything  to  do  with 
exogamy  or  the  feeling  against  incest.  But  the  idea  of 
sound  breeding  appears  unmistakably  in   certain  phases 

^  Archiv  fur  Rassen-  tind  Gesellschaflsbiologie,  Heft  i,  191 2. 


264  THEORIES  OF  SOCE\L  PROGRESS 

of  the  custom  of  loaning  or  exchanging  wives  :  for  example, 
among  the  Eskimos.  ''We  are  told,"  says  Starcke,  "that 
the  Eskimos  are  very  willing  that  the  Angekoks  (medicine 
men)  should  have  intercourse  with  their  wives,  since  in  this 
way  they  believe  that  they  shall  obtain  sons  who  will  excel 
all  others.  The  same  thing  is  said  of  the  Keiaz  of  Paropa- 
missus."     Similar  ideas  have  been  met  among  the  Arabs.^ 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  good  deal  of  the  modern  discussion 
of  eugenics  and  the  inheritance  of  superior  abilities  is  no 
less  naive  and  unconvincing  than  the  ideas  of  these  Eskimos 
and  Arabs.  Much  of  Galton's  work  comes  no  nearer  the 
mark.  Of  course,  Galton  never  for  a  moment  wanted  to 
breed  a  race  exclusively  of  one  exalted  type.  He  expressly 
declared  that  society  would  be  very  dull  if  "every  man 
resembled  the  highly  estimable  Marcus  Aurelius  or  Adam 
Bede.  The  aim  of  Eugenics  is  to  represent  each  class  by 
its  best  specimens ;  that  done,  to  leave  them  to  work  out 
their  common  civilizations  in  their  own  way."  ^ 

But  who  shall  determine  these  best  specimens?  Shall  we 
adopt  Plato's  device  and  elect  a  committee  or  appoint  a  com- 
mission on  breeding  ?  Or  have  we  any  sound  evidence  that 
such  a  commission  could  so  stack  the  cards  of  heredity  that 
these  best  specimens  would  infallibly  reproduce  themselves  ? 
Is  society  willing  to  rest  its  future  upon  deductions  from  the 
study  of  guinea  pigs,  white  mice,  and  the  Jukes  family  ?  I 
am  reminded  here  of  a  London  editor's  reply  to  a  correspond- 
ent who  asked  the  best  way  to  get  a  good  bag  of  lions  in  the 
Kalahari  desert.  The  Kalahari  desert,  he  said,  is  princi- 
pally composed  of  sand  and  lions.  First  you  sift  out  all 
the  sand  with  a  big  sieve.  Then  the  lions  will  remain. 
These  you  place  in  a  bag  which  is  carried  for  the  purpose  ! 

There  are  four  heretofore  insuperable  obstacles  to  any 

*  C.  N.  Starcke,  The  Primitive  Family,  123-4. 

2  Quoted  by  Holmes,  Atlantic  Monthly,  Februaty,  1915,  p.  226. 


THE  EUGENISTS  265 

successful  policy  of  eugenic  breeding.  First,  most  of  the 
data  from  breeding  experiments  with  plants  and  animals, 
upon  which  the  program  of  the  eugenists  is  based,  belong,  as 
Professor  Miller  has  shown,  to  the  world  of  description ; 
while  good  and  bad,  character,  the  social  qualities,  belong 
to  the  world  of  appreciation  and  value,  and  are  subject  to 
wholly  different  laws,  resulting  as  they  do  from  the  play  of 
another  order  of  forces  and  experiences.^ 

Second,  nobody  knows  enough  about  human  heredity, 
at  least  with  sufficient  definiteness  to  serve  as  the  basis  of 
absolute  social  polity.  Nobody  knows  the  myriad  poten- 
tialities of  parents,  nor  how  to  bring  them  to  the  surface  in 
offspring.  The  2500  human  traits  already  isolated  represent 
the  barest  beginning.  Eugenists  may  assume  that  coming 
events  cast  their  shadows  before,  but  it  is  possible  to  cite  cases 
upon  cases  of  genius  in  which,  as  Proctor  long  ago  pointed 
out, "  the  approach  of  a  great  man  was  in  no  sort  indicated  by 
scintillations  along  the  genealogical  track."  Gal  ton's  own 
researches  into  the  inheritance  of  genius  leave  the  question 
approximately  where  it  stood  before  him. 

Third,  procreation  is  only  one  of  the  objects  of  mating  — 
generally  a  wholly  secondary  or  even  more  remote  purpose. 
Since  we  cannot  legislate  attractiveness  it  is  impossible  as 
things  stand  now  to  order  marriages  as  one  does  combination 
breakfasts  at  a  restaurant.  Marriages  may  or  may  not  be 
made  in  heaven,  but  they  are  certainly  not  made  by  laws  or 
policemen  or  laboratory  experts. 

Fourth,  children  are  not  begotten  to  order,  even  by  war- 
brides  at  the  Emperor's  behest.  Voluntary  polygamy  has 
been  suggested  more  than  once  (most  recently  at  the  15th 
International  Congress  of  Hygiene  and  Demography, 
Washington,    191 2)    as    an    inducement    to    the    self-con- 

1  Cf.  H.  A.  Miller,  "Psychological  Limits  of  Eugenics,"  Pop.  Sci.  Mo., 
April,  1914,  p.  392. 


266  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

stituted  "fittest"  to  stimulate  their  birth-rate.  But  polyg- 
amy has  been  known  to  act  as  a  notorious  check  upon  the 
birth-rate.  Moreover,  the  fit,  meaning  the  prosperous  and 
gifted,  rarely  beget  children  up  to  their  supposed  capacity. 
And  no  amount  of  eugenic  scolding  will  change  their  poHcy. 
Oddly  enough  the  scare-head  type  of  eugenist  forgets  that 
as  a  rule  population  varies  inversely  as  intelligence ;  not 
because  the  intelligent  cannot  bear  children :  for,  despite 
Herbert  Spencer,  the  fecundity  of  highly  educated  women  is 
amply  proved ;  but  because  the  highly  gifted  woman  con- 
ceives herself  as  something  more  than  a  rabbit,  and  her 
husband  aims  higher  in  his  idea  of  social  service  than  the 
mere  keeping  of  a  rabbit  warren.  If  standards  of  con- 
spicuous waste  dominate  or  can  be  brought  to  dominate  a 
social  group,  it  may  be  altogether  possible  to  raise  the 
birth-rate  of  the  "higher  classes  " ;  for  if  the  humbler  and 
middle  classes  restrict  their  families  in  order  to  "get  on," 
their  social  superiors  will  beget  and  rear  large  families  if 
for  no  other  reason  than  to  be  different  and  to  consume 
grandly  and  conspicuously.  Children  under  a  monogamous 
non-slave  regime  must  be  made  to  take  the  place  occupied 
of  old  by  plural  wives  and  regiments  of  slaves.  On  the 
whole,  then,  it  is  a  slow  and  at  best  uncertain  task  to  pit  the 
higher  classes  against  the  unfit  in  the  population  race; 
society  as  its  chief  measure  of  self-defense  must  turn  to 
eliminating,  or  at  least  diminishing,  the  causes  which  operate 
to  produce  the  incapable  by  birth  or  lack  of  care.  That  is 
to  say,  if  birth  is  to  become  a  considered  process  and  not  a 
wholesale  accident,  it  must  depend  rather  upon  such  in- 
direct factors  as  generalized  economic  opportunity  and 
liberal  education  than  upon  repression  or  coercion. 

The  wiser  among  the  eugenists  reject  utterly  all  notions 
of  external  compulsion.  They  decline,  as  somebody 
recently  put  it,  to  "conjugate  biology  in  the  imperative 


THE   EUGENISTS  267 

mood,"  and  appeal  only  to  educated  public  opinion  for  the 
realization  of  their  ideals.  Galton  saw  this  clearly.  One 
of  his  disciples,  Havelock  Ellis,  is  of  like  mind.  He 
recognizes  the  futility  of  mere  legislation  in  the  elevation 
of  the  race  and  believes  that  the  hope  of  the  future  lies  in 
rendering  eugenics  a  part  of  religion.  "The  only  com- 
pulsion we  can  apply  in  eugenics  is  the  compulsion  that 
comes  from  within."  Health  certificates  as  preliminary  to 
marriage,  and  segregation  or  sterilization  of  the  unfit,  he 
considers,  may  be  excellent  when  wisely  applied,  mis- 
chievous and  ridiculous  in  the  hands  of  fanatics.^ 

If,  as  Wallace  contended,  racial  improvement  in  the 
future  is  to  be  accomplished  through  the  agency  of  female 
choice  in  marriage,^  it  is  evident  that  whatever  will  render 
woman  freer  to  choose  men  of  character  and  vigor,  clean 
men,  men  who  love,  will  release  her  from  the  necessity  of 
taking  the  first  comer  in  order  to  escape  from  bondage  to 
her  family,  from  the  contumely  of  spinsterhood,  and  from 
the  uncertainty  which  surrounds  getting  a  living  in  a  'man- 
made-world.'  The  political  and  economic  equality  of 
women  thus  appears  to  Wallace  the  most  effective  eugenic 
measure  possible.  It  would  give  woman  a  commanding 
position.  It  would  add  to  the  mores  the  idea  that  it  is  a 
degradation  to  marry  except  for  love  and  esteem.  Men 
would  be  forced  upwards.  The  idly  dissolute,  lazy, 
diseased,  impure,  and  ignorant  would  stand  small  chance 
of  marriage  and  perpetuation  of  their  kind. 

But  what  is  even  more  significant  for  social  as  dis- 
tinguished from  mere  physical  or  racial  health,  the  equaliz- 

^  "The  New  Social  Hygiene,"  Yale  Review,  n.  s.  1:373-4.  Cf.  idem, 
The  Problem  of  Race  Regeneration,  pp.  60-71 ;  see  also  C.  W.  Saleeby,  The 
Methods  0/  Race  Regeneration,  especially  pp.  16-63  !  Dr.  Davenport  also  rec- 
ognizes the  ineffectiveness  of  restrictive  marriage  laws  and  customs,  par- 
ticularly upon  the  "  socially  inadequate  classes  "  :  see  Bulletin  No.  9,  Eugenics 
Record  Office. 

2  "Human  Selection,"  Fortnightly  Review,  September,  1890. 


268  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ing  of  womankind  should  pour  into  the  common  social 
store  a  stream  of  energy  and  capacity  altogether  unsuspected 
and  of  splendid  quality.  Lester  F.  Ward  stoutly  maih- 
tained  the  thesis  that  while  the  amount  of  visible  genius 
has  never  exceeded  one-tenth  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  general 
population,  at  least  200  times  as  much  really  exists  and 
might  be  brought  out :  the  greater  part  of  such  genius  Hes 
latent  in  the  great  mass  and  has  never  had  an  opportunity 
to  manifest  itself.^  Just  before  his  death  Professor  Ward 
published  in  the  American  Journal  of  Sociology  a  brilliant 
address,  "Eugenics,  Euthenics,  and  Eudemics,"  in  which  his 
views  are  reiterated  with  supreme  vigor  and  clarity. 
Discarding  the  familiar  spindle-shaped  graph  of  "distribu- 
tion of  ability"  (used  by  Ammon,  Sumner,  etc.)  which 
shows  most  of  us  in  a  great  middle  zone  of  mediocrity, 
with  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  genius  at  one  tip  of  the 
spindle,  he  adopts  the  much  more  democratic  and  liberal 
diagram  which  is  here  reproduced. 

Genius  One-tenth  of  One  Per  Cent. 

A 


(Latent  genius  and  talent  scattered  somewhat  equally 
throughout  the  mass,  amounting  in  all  lines  to  at 
least  50  per  cent.,  needing  only  to  be  called  out.) 

Normal-minded  90^*5  Per  Cent. 

(Transition  from  defectives  to  normal  not  gradual, 
but  abrupt,  the  latter  sound,  the  former  pathologic.) 


V 
Defectives  One-half  of  One  Per  Cent. 

^  Marshall,  the  English  economist,  measured  this  waste  by  declaring  that 
more  than  half  his  country's  best  natural  genius  lay  among  the  working 
people,  and  that  the  greater  part  of  it  was  never  developed  through  lack  of 
opportunity.     (Princ.  of  Econ.,  5th  ed.,  i,  212-13.) 


THE   EUGENISTS  269 

I  am  not  so  certain  as  Professor  Ward  was  that  the 
transition  from  defectives  to  normal  is  abrupt,  since  many 
grades  and  shades  of  defectives  are  encountered.  It  is  only 
recently,  for  example,  that  the  moron  type  of  feebleminded- 
ness has  been  isolated.  Heretofore  this  class  was  accounted 
normal  and  dealt  with  by  schools  and  courts  as  normal. 
But  at  the  other  end  of  the  field  Professor  Ward  seems  to  be 
on  inexpugnable  ground  in  declaring  that  by  virtue  of  the 
many  forms  which  genius  takes -we  cannot  escape  the  con- 
clusion that  some  measure  of  genius  exists  in  nearly 
every  one,  and  that  this  genius  is  scattered  somewhat 
uniformly  throughout  the  whole  mass  of  the  population. 
Now,  would  it  not  be  the  utterest  absurdity  to  allot  this 
store  of  genius  on  strict  sex  lines  to  the  male  half  of  society  ? 
Is  it  not  common  sense  to  assume  that  a  general  share  of 
this  latent  genius  is  lodged  in  women?  Since  the  object 
of  positive  eugenics  is  to  develop  and  evoke  this  latent 
genius,  one  of  its  most  obvious  means  would  seem  to  be  to 
improve  the  status  of  women.  This  is  not  a  question  of 
chivalry,  of  petty  politics,  or  of  pettier  wit ;  it  is  a  question 
of  applied  sociology,  of  science  devoted  to  the  real  prog- 
ress of  human  society. 

Two  very  concrete  examples  may  be  cited  to  show  the 
intellectual  power  lying  latent  in  "the  masses."  The 
London  Morning  Post  in  an  article  (April  29,  19 10)  review- 
ing the  labors  of  the  Workers'  Educational  Association, 
which  organizes  lectures  and  classes  for  mill-hands  and  other 
workers,  said : 

"The  standard  of  work  achieved  in  the  first  classes 
started  was  remarkably  high.  An  experienced  history 
examiner  in  Oxford,  who  went  through  a  large  number  of 
essays,  selected  at  haphazard,  made  the  dehberate  pro- 
nouncement that  over  one-third  of  them  reached  the  first- 
class  standards  of  the  Oxford  Modern  History  School." 


270  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

'The  history  of  the  great  Austrian  peasant  philosopher, 
Konrad  Deubler,  also  illustrates  the  contention  that  great 
intellectual  power  slumbers  in  the  lower  classes.  Deubler 
was  the  son  of  a  poor  miner,  early  apprenticed  as  a  miller's 
hand.  His  schooling  was  the  scantiest;  indeed,  he  never 
learned  to  write  correctly  in  spite  of  intimate  acquaintance 
with  great  scholars.  But  he  developed  a  passion  for  read- 
ing, particularly  in  philosophy,  natural  science,  art  and 
economics.  His  intellectual  activity  and  broad  learning 
made  him  the  peer  of  the  professional  thinker.  This 
brought  him  into  close  contact  with  Strauss,  Haeckel, 
Lasalle,  Marx,  Engels,  Heyse,  Rosegger,  and  many  other 
brilliant  minds.  But  he  was  no  mere  sponge.  He  became 
a  lighthouse  to  his  fellow  peasants.  He  published  books 
and  newspapers  for  them,  converted  his  house  into  a 
library  and  museum,  and  may  be  said  in  no  mean  sense  to 
have  anticipated  much  that  is  best  in  the  social  settle- 
ment movement ;  for  both  peasant  and  scholar  met  at 
the  common  center,  much  as  French  university  professors 
and  workingmen  have  dreamed  of  coming  together  in  the 
Universites  Populaires.  The  best  evidence  of  Deubler's 
power  and  influence  appears  in  his  arrest  and  sequestration 
by  the  Austrian  government ;  no  less  by  his  subsequent 
rehabilitation  in  all  civil  rights  and  his  election  as  burgo- 
master cf  his  home  community. 

We  could  be  much  more  patient  with  the  eugenist  if 
he  ceased  wailing  over  the  infertility  of  the  higher  classes ; 
for  there  seems  to  be  no  use  in  crying  over  this  sort  of  spilled 
milk.  The  fact  is  that  society  suffers  far  less  from  race 
suicide  among  the  capable  or  exceptionally  endowed  than 
from  failure  to  utilize  the  capacities  of  the  ordinarily  well- 
endowed.  This,  in  a  current  and  pregnant  phrase,  is  the 
"social  waste  of  unguided  personal  ability."  Suppose  we 
analyze   this  waste  in  terms  of  education.     One-half  the 


THE  EUGENISTS  271 

male  population  of  the  United  States  is  not  carried  far 
enough  by  our  educational  system  to  see,  far  less  to  under- 
stand, the  vocational  opportunities  of  modern  life.  Little 
rational  vocational  selection  is  provided  even  for  those 
boys  who  reach  the  last  years  of  the  elementary  school. 
Poverty,  lack  of  foresight  and  outlook  entailed  by  a  narrow 
and  difficult  social  environment,  momentary  whim,  conta- 
gious admiration,  ambition  divorced  from  sound  reason, 
dominate  the  youth  in  the  selection  of  a  vocation,  where  he 
ought  to  have  definite  guidance  and  education  in  the  per- 
ception of  compatibility  between  personal  traits  and  occupa- 
tional demands.  Indeed,  frequently  such  crude  intuitions  as 
whim  or  naive  self-appraisement  must  capitulate  before  the 
exigency  of  the  moment,  and  the  youth  is  forced  into  the 
first  gainful  occupation  that  presents  itself,  regardless  of 
the  fact  that  it  may  be  a  'dead-end'  job,  an  industrial  blind 
alley  that  leads  nowhere  except  perhaps  to  the  slough  of 
casual  labor. ^  Since  eugenics  cannot  create  anything  new 
or  good  in  human  nature  —  mind  or  body  —  and  since  it 
can  only  free  it  from  hindrances  or  constrictions,  here 
would  seem  to  be  a  legitimate  and  fruitful  field  for  the 
operation  of  positive  eugenics. 

Robert  Owen  saw  this  clearly  a  century  ago.  In  an 
address  to  the  superintendents  of  manufactories,  written 
toward  the  end  of  181 3,  he  anticipated  the  call  of  positive 
eugenics,  factory  welfare  work,  and  scientific  management 
in  his  appeal  for  the  cotton  mill  operatives.  He  urged  his 
fellow  captains  of  industry  to  consider  the  human  values 
in  the  productive  mechanism,  and  stood  thus  in  rather  sharp 
contrast  to  the  crude  political  economizing  of  his  day. 

"Far  more  attention"  said  he,  "has  been  given  to  per- 
fect the  raw  materials  of  wood  and  metals  than  those  of 

^  Cf.  Woods,  "Social  Waste  of  Unguided  Personal  Ability,"  Amer.  Jour. 
Sociology,  19  :  358-69. 


272  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

body  and  mind.  .  .  .  Man,  even  as  an  instrument  for  the 
creation  of  wealth,  may  be  greatly  improved.  .  .  .  You  may 
not  only  partially  improve  these  living  instruments,  but 
learn  how  to  impart  to  them  such  excellence  as  shall  make 
them  infinitely  surpass  those  of  the  present  and  all  former 
times." 

In  no  mean  sense,  then,  positive  eugenics  means  the 
socializing  of  opportunity,  which  is  the  final  significance  and 
aim  of  social  education.  While  it  is  true  that  a  biological 
embargo  preventing  the  multiplication  of  the  unfit  would 
eliminate  much  social  legislation  and  social  patchwork, 
it  is  evident  that  the  laying  of  this  embargo  is  a  problem 
in  the  sociological  field  of  the  mores.  Hence  the  task  of 
eugenics  is  not  after  all  biological  but  social.  In  short,  it 
is  merely  one  phase  of  social  selection.  The  issue  reduces, 
in  consequence,  to  a  choice  between  direct  action  upon  the 
parties  to  sexual  reproduction  and  that  indirect  action  which 
might  be  expected  from  the  creation  of  a  more  favorable 
social  environment.^ 

Perhaps  the  best  way  to  sum  up  this  whole  discussion  of 
selection  and  eugenics,  and  at  the  same  time  show  the 
limitations  of  natural  selection,  is  to  say  that  natural 
selection  picks  out  the  individuals  fitted  to  thrive  in  or 
withstand  a  given  or  changing  environment,  but  does  not 
select  individuals  who  will  fit  into  a  progressive  environ- 
ment or  who  will  better  it.  Natural  science  knows  nothing 
of  a  progressive  environment ;  that  is  distinctively  a  human 
concept.  Hence  rational  selection,  having  in  view  a  pro- 
gressive humanity  in  a  progressing  environment,  is  a  social 
process.  It  is  not  mere  adaptation  or  conformity  we  want, 
but  the  abihty  to  react  on  an  environment  for  its  benefit. 
Such  a  process  cannot  go  on  blindly ;  it  must  be  conscious. 

^  Cf.  A.  R.  Wallace,  Studies  Scientific  and  Social,  i,  516-17 ;  for  the  eco- 
nomic hindrances  to  positive  eugenics,  see  W.  L.  Holt,  "  The  Economic  Fac- 
tors in  Eugenics,"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  November,  1913. 


THE  EUGENISTS  273 

It  must  not  be  acquiescent ;  for  it  must  realize  that  the 
struggle  for  existence  tends  to  make  those  forms  of  economic 
and  social  organization  prevail  which  are  best  fitted  to 
thrive  in  but  not  necessarily  beneficial  to  their  environment, 
and  hence  in  the  long  run  to  the  individuals  or  groups  placed 
in  that  environment.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  selective 
process  must  ceaselessly  strive  to  call  forth  the  genius  and 
the  heretic  for  the  health  and  progress  of  society  ;  for  genius 
is  contagious,  just  as  contagious  as  stupidity.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  dearth  of  visible  genius  as  compared  with  the 
great  store  of  potential  genius  lying  latent  in  the  masses, 
makes  it  clear  that  the  selective  processes  have  hitherto 
worked  more  or  less  blindly  and  haltingly.  To  utilize  the 
principle  of  selection  as  a  force  for  progress  it  must  be 
divested  of  all  its  purely  mechanical  and  irrational  aspects 
and  conceived  as  a  human,  social,  supremely  rational 
instrument  for  a  clearly  defined,  conscious  social  purpose. 
Eugenics  may  be  destined  to  become  this  instrument ;  if 
so,  it  must  work  somewhat  along  the  lines  of  reclamation 
and  utilization  of  latent  human  resources  which  scientific 
analysis,  common  sense,  and  human  sentiment  unite  in 
declaring  necessary. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  RACIALISTS 

(Inter-Group  Selection  :  Race  Conflicts) 

Selection  in  the  terms  so  far  stated  is  a  process  that 
goes  on  between  members  within  the  same  group.  But 
there  is  a  wider  range  of  its  activity,  that  is,  inter-group 
selection.  Corresponding  to  the  struggle  between  whole 
species  in  the  vegetable  and  animal  world  the  race-conflict 
theorists  of  social  progress  find  a  keen  struggle  between 
human  groups  aligned  according  to  racial  quahties,  prob- 
ably the  last  stage  of  the  primordial  human  fight  for 
survival.  A  dogmatic  Enghsh  eugenist  goes  so  far  as  to 
claim  that  history  shows  him  "one  way  and  one  way  only 
in  which  a  high  state  of  civilization  has  been  produced, 
namely,  the  struggle  of  race  with  race,  and  the  survival  of 
the  physically  and  mentally  fitter  race."  ^ 

These  theorists  usually  assume  the  polygenetic  origin  of 
man  and  certain  irreducible  race  quahties  capable  of  pro- 
ducing those  apparently  invincible  race  antagonisms  which, 
they  claim,  form  the  real  stuff  of  history.  M.  Gobineau 
was  if  not  the  first  at  least  the  most  influential  protagonist 
of  this  doctrine.  His  great  treatise,  the  Essai  sur  Vinegalite 
des  races  humaines,  fell  in  well,  both  as  to  time  and  content, 
with  German  pretensions  to  the  hegemony  of  Europe,  and 
incidentally  to  a  world  Pan-Germanism.     It  at  least  has 

^  Karl  Pearson,  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,  19. 

274 


THE  RACIALISTS  275 

made  possible  the  enormous  popularity  of  such  Germanists 
as  Stuart  Houston  Chamberlain,  and  probably  paved  the 
way  for  the  sudden  exaltation  of  the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche 
with  its  apotheosis  of  brutal  force,  hardness,  and  the  will-to- 
power.  It  also  attracted  some  men  of  science  and  was 
partly  responsible  for  the  false  interpretation  of  Darwin's 
principles  which  currently  goes  by  the  name  Social  Dar- 
winism, and  which  seems  to  have  been  financed,  in  part  at 
least  in  Germany,  by  the  Krupps,  who  had  everything  to 
gain  by  the  exploitation  of  chauvinism.  The  essentials  of 
Gobineau's  theory  are :  the  multiple  origin  of  the  human 
species^,  that  ethnic  differences  are  permanent;  that  the 
human  race  is  not  a  unit  but  is  a  congeries  of  ethnic  groups  tu 
intellectuallyjinegual ;  that  neither  the  race  as  a  whole  nor  ^l\a^ 
any  of  its  parts  is  indefinitely  perfectible  ;  that  the  course  of  ^^ 
race  histories  is  independent  of  government^  religionL,_or^ 
other  institutions,  also  of  geogmphiml  qiirrojrmding'^ ;  that 
all  races  tend  to  degenerate  because  the  higher  allow  the 
blood  of  lower  races  to  mix  with  and  contaminate  their 
primeval  purity  and  strength  ;  hence  that  the  whole  hurnan 
species  is  destined  inevitably  to  jjerlsh  wlthm  from  twelve 
to  fourteen  thousancT  years.^ 

These  exaggerated  and  unfounded  conclusions  are  less 
important  in  themselves  than  in  their  bearing  upon  modern 
imperialism,  the  relations  between  conquering  and  subject 
nationalities,  and  upon  a  certain  tendency  in  sociological 
theory.  The  assumption  by  the  imperialists  (of  whatever 
race  or  time)  of  inherent  and  unquestionable  superiority  is 
a  fact  too  common  to  require  comment.  It  is  merely  an 
exaggeration  of  the  ethnocentrism  which  marks  every 
petty  tribe.  It  is  obvious  enough  that  race  egotism  among 
primitive  groups  was  due  to  their  ignorance  and  isolation. 

.     ^  For  an  acute  criticism  of  Gobineau,  the  "race  mystic,"  see  J.  M.  Hone, 
Contemp.  Review,  104  :  94-103. 


? 


276  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

But  shall  we  set  down  modern  race  boasting  and  strutting 
]  to  the  same  causes  ?  To  ignorance,  yes ;  and  to  deliberate 
fostering  of  imperialism  or  dynastic  pretensions ;  and  to 
the  "headiness"  which  comes  from  the  new  wine  of  quick 
and  easy  success.  Thus  America,  though  young,  believes  in 
]  her  "manifest  destiny"  to  show  the  world  how  to  make 
money,  do  business,  win  battles,  and  take  up  the  white 
man's  burden.  Thus  England  sincerely  believes  herself  the 
repository  of  colonial  wisdom.  But  for  the  choicest  illus- 
tration of  race  egotism  run  riot,  we  must  look  to  modern 
Pan- Germanism.  Wilhelm  II  declares  in  all  gravity  that 
the  German  people  are  the  chosen  of  God  ;  that  on  him  the 
Spirit  of  God  has  descended ;  that  he  is  the  weapon,  the 
sword,  the  vice-regent  of  the  Lord.  Bernhardi  has  no  doubt 
that  the  Germans  are  the  "greatest  civilized  people  known 
to  history."  And  S.  H.  Chamberlain,  the  Germanized 
Englishman,  wins  the  reading  suffrage  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands by  his  theory  that  "true  history  begins  from  the 
moment  when  the  German  with  mighty  hand  seizes  the 
inheritance  of  antiquity."  He  claims  the  genius  of  the 
earth  as  German.  Dante's  face  strikes  him  as  "char- 
acteristically German"!  And  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  he  regards  as  a  "document  in  which  one  fancies 
one  hears  a  German  speaking  who  was  exceptionally 
gifted  for  the  understanding  of  deepest  mysteries." 
Whether  Christ  was  a  German  or  not,  he  does  not  definitely 
decide;  he  goes  so  far,  however,  as  to  declare  that  "who- 
ever maintains  that  Christ  was  a  Jew  is  either  ignorant  or 
dishonest."  Another,  but  less  discriminating  German  au- 
thority did  not  balk  at  claiming  the  founder  of  Christian- 
ity as  a  member  of  his  race. 

The  statement  of  similar  ideas  by  such  a  really  great 
social  scientist  as  Gumplowicz  merits  some  attention.  He 
assumes  the  polygenetic  origin  of  man  and  of  man's  typical 


r 


THE  RACIALISTS  277 

institutions  —  language,  religion,  etc. ;  hence  irreducible 
natural  variations  reenforced  by  diverse  human  histories. 
On  the  analogy  of  the  two  factors  in  every  physical  or 
chemical  process,  — (i)  heterogeneous  elements,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  (2)  reciprocal  action,  —  he  finds  in  human  history 
certain  heterogeneous  elements,  ethnical  diversities,  and 
a  reciprocal  action  which  we  might  not  unfairly  paraphrase 
as  eat  or  be  eaten.  Gumplowicz'  formula  for  this  process 
runs :  Every  powerful  ethnic  or  social  element  seeks  to 
use  for  its  own  ends  every  weak  element  which  is  found 
in  or  which  penetrates  its  zone  of  influence.^  To  this  a 
generalization  he  accords  ail  the  validity  of  the  most  certain  ^)\r 
laws  of  the  physical  sciences.  Elsewhere  he  puts  the  matter 
more  concretely :  The  highest  jaw  of  social  development 
is  group  jelf-interest.  the  struggle  for  group  self-mainte- 
nance^Pressure  of  increasing  population  from  within  ' 
forces  expnnsio"  ^^^  ronflirt  witJiout,  with  agglomeration,  . 
amalgamation,  or  extinction  as  the  result.  This  agglomera- 
tion and  its  corollaries  form  the  social  process.^  Thus  the 
almost  bewildering  number  of  small  primitive  human  tribes 
was  diminished  by  literal  extinction,  by  conquest,  and  con- 
sumption.  It  was  all  a  process  of  absorption  more  or  less 
literal  and  gross,  first  by  eating,  later  by  intermarriage  and 
peaceful  assimilation. 

It  goes  almost  without  saying  that  war  is  the  great  means  \ 
by  which  this  process  of  absorption,  this  unity  out  of  hetero-  ( 
geneity,  is  accomplished.  For  Gumplowicz  the  great 
motive  force  behind  the  scenes  is  syngenism,  a  natural 
sentiment  of  synthesis,  of  social  union,  of  cohesion.  This  is 
of  course  only  a  name  and  is  open  to  the  same  criticism 
that  has  been  leveled  at  other  supposed  "social  forces." 
Yet  the  fact  remains  that  to  secure  this  unity,  which  ought 

^  Rassenkampf,  French  transl.,  p.  159. 
2  Sociologie  imd  Polilik,  78  £f . 


278  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

to  mean  peace,  war  is  the  sublime  instrument.  Indeed, 
Gumplowicz  is  inclined  to  agree  with  Odysse  Barrot 
that  the  idea  of  war  is  the  only  innate  idea.^  This  is 
simply  another  way  of  saying  that  all  is  conflict,  a  maxim 
which  will  come  up  for  criticism  later.  Meanwhile  let  us 
run  down  to  its  bitter  end  Gumplowicz'  doctrine.  Amalga- 
mation by  struggle,  says  he,  is  the  only  real  thing  in  history. 
It  goes  on  in  peace  and  in  war.  Perpetual  peace  is  only  the 
dream  of  idealists.  But  with  a  hardihood  rarely  matched 
this  modest  college  professor  propounds  the  monstrous 
principle  that  this  whole  business  of  race  conflicts  is  a 
perpetual  struggle  and  without  progress }  It  does  not  alter 
the  matter  nor  soften  the  shock  to  learn  that  this  is  '  salutary 
pessimism.'  His  final  conclusion  merely  develops  this 
idea : 

"In  a  word,  throughout  the  whole  of  the  historical 
process  there  is  neither  progress  nor  retrogression.  There 
is  only  progress  here  and  there,  in  certain  periods  of  this 
eternal  cycle,  in  certain  countries  where  social  progress 
ever  recommences.  There  it  is  true  there  is  a  beginning  of 
development,  a  culminating  point,  and  necessarily  also  a 
decline."  ' 

There  is  neither  progress  nor  going  backwards.  There 
is  only  eternal  conflict  that  gets  us  nowhere.  We  are  like 
fighting  squirrels  whose  fruitless  combat  serves  only  to  keep 
the  cage  spinning  forever.  Strange  philosophy.  And 
stranger  science.  For  the  whole  structure  rests  upon  a 
flimsy  foundation.  Nobody  has  the  slightest  evidence  of  the 
multiple  origin  of  man.  By  the  blood  or  mating  test  the 
human  species  is  a  unit.  Neither  does  anybody  know 
that  race  characters  are  fixed,  nor  that  races  are  ineluctably 
superior  or  inferior.     Most  recent  studies  tend  to  show 

^  Sociologie  und  Politik,  97.  ^  Rassenkampf,   French  ed.,  350. 

3  Ibid.,  348. 


THE  RACIALISTS  279 

exactly  the  opposite.  Race  prejudice,  which  is  commonly 
assumed  to  prove  natural  and  inbred  antipathies,  turns  out 
to  be  the  result  of  clash  of  mores,  of  economic  interests, 
or  the  product  of  deliberate  policy.  And  the  lessening  of 
race  prejudice  is  set  down  as  one  of  the  marks  of  progress. 
Moreover,  race  conflicts  by  no  means  require  the  assump- 
tion of  superior  and  inferior  races.  It  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  show  that  racial  equality  in  intelligence  and  morals 
tends  to  sharpen  the  rivalry  between  races,  or  as  in  our 
own  South,  between  diverse  racial  elements  in  the  same 
population. 

Gumplowicz'  theory  is  unsatisfactory,  not  because  it 
is  pessimistic,  but  because  it  is  lop-sided  and  exaggerated. 
It  is  indisputable  that  race-confficts  have  formed  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  stuff  of  history.  It  is  also  true  that 
many  superficial  differences  exist  between  races.  But 
conflict  is  only  one  of  the  phases  of  race  contact.  Conflict 
may  persist  to  the  crack  of  doom,  but  to  base  a  theory  of 
necessary  conflict  on  certain  assumed  inherent  differences 
of  racial  character  or  constitution  is  incautious,  to  say  the 
least ;  for  greater  variations  of  skull  formation,  brain  weight, 
mental  and  physical  capacity,  are  to  be  found  between 
members  of  the  same  ethnic  group  than  between  separate 
ethnic  stocks.  Inherent  differences  in  "racial  vitahty, " 
though  frequently  asserted,^  are  by  no  means  demonstrated  ; 
they  seem  to  partake  less  of  the  character  of  inherent 
variations,  and  more  of  degrees  of  adaptability  to  artificial 
environments.  It  proves  nothing  to  say  that  Negroes  and 
Indians  are  more  liable  to  tuberculosis ;  for  tuberculosis  is 
predominantly  the  result  of  fatigue,  lack  of  food,  air,  and 
sunshine.  Again,  brain  weight  corresponds  in  no  way  to 
degree   of   intelligence.     Craniometry   is   of   no   value   in 

^  E.g.,  Davenport,  "Racial  Element  in  National  Vitality,"  Popular  Science 
Monthly,  April,  1915,  331-3. 


k 


28o  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

attempting  to  fix  racial  differences.  For  cranial  measure- 
ments place  Hottentots  and  Portuguese,  Bushmen,  Kurds, 
Solomon  Islanders,  and  certain  French  types ;  Bororo 
and  Dutch ;  Battas  and  Perigord  French,  all  on  the  same 
level.  Recent  studies  in  human  pigmentation  show  that  it, 
too,  is  not  a  fundamental  mark  of  racial  character.  Skin 
pigment  is  a  protection  against  too  much  sunlight  and  varies 
with  intensity  of  sunlight.  It  is  an  acquired  resistance 
and  has  no  necessary  connection  with  other  traits. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  race  question  in  its  physiological 
aspects  is  of  comparatively  little  significance  to  sociology. 
/         Races  there  are,  to  be  sure,  in  the  physiological  sense  of  the 
.  y*^\:elative  persistence   of   a   certain   group  of   bodily  char- 
^        acteristics.     Yet  this  physical  persistence  through  heredity 
^       /is  of  little  or  no  importance  by  comparison  with  the  vast 
^^  I  significance  of  race  mores,  the  social  heredity  of  races  and 
/  I  smaller  groups,  that  vast  accumulation  of  tribal  ways  and 
means  of  meeting  local  situations,   the  philosophies  and 
cults  that  grow  out  of  such  reactions,  together,  it  may  be, 
with  echoes  of  prehistoric  conflicts  for  Hfe  between  neighbor- 
ing groups.     All  these  social  elements  become  woven  up 
into  a  web  of  psychic  antagonisms  which  we  call  race 
prejudice,  clash  of  race  mores,  etc.     And  they  are  the  true 
meaning  of  race.     One  might  even  go  farther  and  assert 
I    with  considerable  show  of  validity  that  not  only  is  race  a 
\    psychological  and  sociological  concept,  but  it  corresponds  to 
\  no  objective  reafity ;   it  is  purely  subjective.     The  raciafist 
•  is  really  a  metaphysician  busied  about  reifying  his  own  per- 
suasion.    A  friend  of  mine  touched  off  this  situation  to  a 
nicety  by  a  happy  paraphrase  of  Shakespeare:  "There  is 
nothing  either  Jew  or  Greek  but  thinking  makes  it  so  !" 

Race  is  psychological.  That  is  why  the  concept  remains 
vivid  despite  the  somewhat  mythical  character  of  the  term 
from  the  physical  standpoint.     Races  persist  because  the 


THE  RACIALISTS  281 

majority  of  men  believe  in  them  heartily,  passionately, 
desperately.  Such  warmth  and  solidarity  of  thinking 
preserve  and  transmit  the  myth.  Race,  we  repeat,  is 
psychological.  But  does  that  mean  that  races  or  nations 
have  souls?  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  'national  mind'  or 
'race  psychology,'  unique  and  distinct?  Those  who  claim 
there  is,  range  in  the  intensity  of  their  conviction  all  the 
way  from  belief  in  a  literal  social  brain  to  mere  predication 
of  certain  easily  recognizable  group  qualities.  When 
Sumner,  for  instance,  speaks  of  the  ethos  or  ''specific  char- 
acter" of  a  society  or  a  period,^  he  simply  means  that 
certain  habitual  reactions  have  been  bred  from  communal 
experiences. 

But  when  a  representative  of  the  folk-psychologists, 
say,  M.  Le  Bon,  speaks  of  race  character,  he  means  some- 
thing much  more  intense.  He  sets  far  greater  store  by  the 
soul  of  a  people  than  by  its  skin  or  its  cranium.  He  never 
questions  that  it  has  a  soul.  And  the  three  solid  bases  of 
this  soul  are  common  sentiments,  common  interests, 
common  beliefs.  He  distinguishes  between  natural  and 
historic  races :  but  the  distinction  is  of  small  significance, 
since  the  really  important  thing  is  the  process  by  which  a 
people  gets  its  soul  and  becomes  conscious  of  it.  This 
process  is  the  cumulative  experiences  of  the  past.  Hence 
his  aphorism  (strongly  reminiscent  of  Comte)  that  a  people 
is  led  by  its  dead  far  more  than  by  its  living.^  Thus  each 
race  has  certain  fundamental  psychological  traits  which 
modify  very  slowly,  if  at  all ;  each  has  certain  accessory 
traits  which  modify  easily  and  lead  to  the  superficial  conclu- 
sion that  variability  and  not  fixity  is  the  rule. 

"The  divers  factors  susceptible  of  acting  on  the  mental 
constitution    of   peoples  .  .  .  act    on    the    accessory    and 

^  Folkways,  36-7,  59. 

2  L'Evolution  psychologique  des  peuples,  2d  ed.,  Bk.  I,  chap.  i. 


282  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

transitory  sides  of  character,  but  do  not  touch  in  the 
slightest  its  fundamental  elements,  or  touch  them  only  as 
the  result  of  very  slow  hereditary  accumulations  .  .  .  psy- 
chological characteristics  like  anatomical  characteristics 
possess  a  very  high  degree  of  fixity."  ^ 

Further,  "intellectual  discoveries  are  transmitted  easily 
from  one  people  to  another.  Quahties  of  character  cannot 
be  transmitted.  .  .  .  The  character  of  a  people  and  not  its 
intelligence  determines  its  evolution  in  history  and  governs 
its  destiny.  ...  It  is  upon  character  and  not  upon 
intelligence  that  societies,  reUgions,  and  empires  are 
founded."  Moreover,  members  of  a  given  race  differ 
little  in  character.  This  of  course  is  absurd.  And  what- 
ever of  generality  exists  in  a  group  is  due  probably  rather 
to  imitation  and  nurture  than  to  some  breeding  in  of  race 
character.  But  what,  after  all,  is  this  'character'  or  'soul' 
of  a  people?  "It  is  precisely  that  net  of  traditions,  ideas, 
sentiments,  behefs,  common  modes  of  thinking  which  forms 
the  soul  of  a  people."  ^  This  is  famihar  doctrine.  So  far 
so  good.  But  can  this  soul  be  modified?  Yes,  and  no; 
it  is  hardly  amenable  to  moral  or  climatic  milieux ;  but 
it  may  be  conquered ;  not  by  a  flip  of  the  hand,  it  is  true, 
but  slowly.  Ill-timed  attempts  to  superimpose  culture 
(whether  in  the  form  of  art,  reHgion,  education,  etc.)  will 
change  merely  the  names  but  not  the  spirit  of  the  cultures 
they  aim  to  supplant.  The  capacity  of  a  people  for  absorb- 
ing a  new  element  of  civilization  is  always  very  restricted.' 

On  the  other  hand,  by  a  sort  of  somersault  M.  Le  Bon 
affirms  that  after  all  the  soul  of  a  people  may  be  very  pro- 
foundly influenced  by  apparently  small  causes ;  for  he  is, 
perhaps  unconsciously,  an  extreme  ideahst.     "The  presence 

^  L'  Evolution  psychologique  des  peuples,  2d  ed.,  Bk.  I,  chap.  ii.  Cf.  S. 
H.  Diggs,  "Relation  of  Race  to  Thought  Expression,"  in  Jour.  Philos. 
Psychol,  and  Sci.  Methods,  xii,  346-358. 

2  Ibid.,  Bk.  I,  chap,  iii ;  Bk.  IV,  chap.  i.  ^  j^i^^  gk.  II,  chap.  ii. 


THE   RACIALISTS  283 

of  strangers,"  he  says,  "even  in  small  number  suffices  to 
alter  the  soul  of  a  people."  ^  This  peaceful  invasion  is  far 
more  significant  in  its  effects  on  race  character  than  military 
invasion.  Rome  changed  far  less  by  barbarian  ravages 
than  by  peaceful  assimilation  through  intermarriage,  com- 
mon service  in  the  army,  etc. 

But  have  we  not  traveled  in  a  circle  and  come  out  with 
the  equation  0  =  0?  Race  characters  are  fundamental 
and  practicably  unalterable ;  yet  they  are  highly  alterable 
through  the  injection  of  a  small  dose  of  new  ideas.  But  this 
is  precisely  what  was  to  be  expected.  Even  Gumplowicz 
maintained  that  race  is  a  historical  rather  than  a  physical 
concept,  "a  unity  which  has  arisen  during  the  course  of 
history  by  and  through  social  development ;  and  it  is  a 
unity  which  finds  its  origin  in  intellectual  phenomena  such 
as  language,  religion,  customs,  law,  culture,  etc."  ^ 

In  short,  to  historical  contingency,  or  environmental 
agencies  in  the  largest  sense,  and  not  to  innate  faculty,  we 
must  turn  for  the  real  causative  factor  in  racial  differences 
and  variations  in  culture.  M.  Leroy-Beaulieu  has  demon- 
strated conclusively  that  supposed  Jewish  traits  are  not 
original  racial  endowment  but  the  product  of  special  types 
of  occupation  and  isolation.^  Therefore  we  are  driven  to 
conclude  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  national  or  racial 
character,  fixed  and  hereditary.  Race  is  not  a  static 
unity  :  it  is  only  an  eternal  becoming.  Historic  races  have 
had  no  very  well-defined  folk-mind,  ethos,  or  psychology. 
Race  sentiment,  as  such,  is  of  comparatively  recent  origin 
and  significance  as  an  effective  factor  in  inter-group  con- 

^  Ihid.,  Bk.  Ill,  chap.  iii.  2  Rassenkampf,  193. 

3  See  his  Israel  chez  les  Nations,  chap,  vi ;  cf .  for  a  good  criticism  of  inborn 
race  characters,  Ross,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  310,  318  ff.  On  the  causal 
effect  of  the  environment  upon  race  character  see  further,  Boas,  Mind  of 
Primitive  Man,  17;  Babington,  Fallacies  of  Race  Theories,  246;  Ross,  The 
Changing  Chinese,  chap,  ii-iii. 


284  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

flicts ;  it  was  practically  unknown  as  a  determining  element 
in  struggles  in  the  ancient  classical  world;  it  is,  at  least 
in  part,  merely  an  incident  in  modern  great  state  and  nation 
building  of  the  last  two  centuries ;  it  has  been  deliberately 
fanned  by  honest  enthusiasts  or  subsidized  literary  and 
scientific  men  who  flattered  the  national  vanity  to  give  a 
background  for  pretensions  to  world  power,  colonial 
squatting  and  Big  Business. 

Owing  to  the  internationalizing  of  human  activities,  an 
international  osmosis,  so  to  speak,  the  concept  of  race  is 
of  diminishing  importance,  and  may  disappear  from  the 
focus  of  men's  thought  and  passions.  Hence  it  turns  out 
that  the  real  selective  forces  in  complex  societies  are 
economic  or  moral,  or  psychological,  or  educational,  but  not 
ethnic.  The  significance  of  this  to  the  matter  of  progress  is 
that,  granted  environmental  changes  are  the  predominant 
forces  in  modifying  group  character,  and  that  group  char- 
acter is  the  reahty  about  group  hfe,  the  uncertainty  about 
the  future  of  inferior  races  is  cleared  up.  It  becomes 
possible  to  forecast  the  progressive  development  of  all 
primitive  peoples  if  only  the  environment  can  be  appro- 
priately modified.  This  is  the  conclusion  of  several 
propositions  laid  before  the  First  Universal  Races  Congress 
in  1911.^ 

Race  conflicts  may  go  on  for  ages;  but  not  because 
some  assumed  biological  principle  of  selection  for  improve- 
ment necessitates  these  conflicts  in  their  present  form.  In 
no  event  is  it  demonstrated  that  race  conflict  is  a  means 
of  progress  or  that  the  fittest,  in  any  final  sense,  survive. 
The  fundamental  error  in  Social  Darwinism  is  that  develop- 
ment is  ascribed  to  struggle  of  beast  with  beast  or  man  with 

^  Proceedings,  p.  73.  Cf.  Babington,  Fallacies  of  Race  Theories,  Essay  I; 
Cornejo,  Rev.  Inlernl.  de  Sociologie,  March,  1911,  pp.  161-189;  Finot,  Race 
Prejudice,  214. 


/U— ^^-^^"^^ 


o 


THE  RACIALI^S'S^^  285 

man,  instead  of  to  what  William  James  called  the  ''im- 
memorial warfare  of  man  against  Nature."  ^  Darwin 
nowhere  warranted  such  a  misinterpretation  of  his  hy- 
pothesis. Many  possibilities  may  arise  as  alternatives  to 
present  day  organized  group  murder  as  a  method  of  race 
hygiene.  It  is  possible  that  man's  control  over  the  physical 
environment  may  stop  race-making,  and  that  race-mixture 
may  attain  such  proportions  that  conflict  may  become 
regional  rather  than  racial.  Or  selection  may  tend  toward 
cooperation  rather  than  conflict.  Or  race  conflicts  may 
gradually  eliminate  the  warhke  nations  just  as  social  selec- 
tion has  bred  out  violent  types  within  the  group.  That  is, 
it  is  possible  that  the  end  of  inter-group  selection,  which  is 
now  apparently  brute  strength,  may  be  transformed  and 
become  cooperation  or  the  abihty  to  federate,  much  in  the 
same  way  that  natural  has  been  supplanted  by  social 
selection  within  the  group.  With  international  and  inter- 
racial osmosis  it  is  possible  that  the  contribution  of  a  given 
race  to  culture  may  be  preserved,  in  part  at  least,  to  the 
world  at  large,  even  though  that  race  itself  perish  in  the 
conflict.  But  from  the  standpoint  of  progress  this  is 
much  like  the  drowning  man's  despairing  clutches  at  a  straw. 
It  is  to  pin  one's  faith  to  a  gigantic  evil  in  order  that  a  tiny 
and  highly  contingent  good  may  result.  But  this  may  be 
our  earthly  destiny.  If  so,  we  cannot  dodge  it.  God's 
will  be  done.  But  neither  can  we  blink  the  fact  that  there 
is  little  hope  for  genuine  advance  in  such  a  wasteful  pro- 
cess. If  race  antagonisms  are  essential  to  the  eternal 
cosmic  order,  we  may  without  dishonor  surrender  all  hope 
of  human  development  and  go  down  with  the  pessimists. 
But  the  inevitableness  of  race  conflict  is  still  only  a  hy- 

^  See  J.  Novicow,  La  critique  du  Darwinisme  Social;  Id.,  Les  Ltittes  entre 
les  societcs  humaines ;  Id.,  War  and  its  Pretended  Benefits  ;  Nasmyth,  Social 
Progress  and  the  Darwinian  Theory ;  W.  E.  Ritter,  War,  Science  and  Civiliza- 
tion; J.  Dewey,  German  Philosophy  and  Politics, 


286  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

pothesis ;   rather,  let  us  say,  a  superstitious  survival  in  our 
world  mores. 

The  recrudescence  of  nationalism  and  race  sentiment 
leading  up  to  and  enhanced  by  the  Great  War  need  not  be 
considered  as  proof  of  eternal  race  characters  or  of  irre- 
ducible race  hatreds  in  the  future  contact  of  European 
peoples.  The  line-up  of  the  armies  themselves  reveals 
many  examples  of  members  of  presumably  the  same  racial 
stock  fighting  each  other.  Ignorance  on  the  one  hand  and 
pseudo-science  on  the  other  will  no  doubt  conspire  to  post- 
pone the  day  of  peaceful  race  contacts,  and  to  hold  us  in  the 
dreary  treadmill  of  cycles  of  unprogressive  conflict  which 
Gumplowicz  saw.  But  if  human  groups  are  to  reach  higher 
levels  that  great  day  must  come  sooner  or  later. ^  Group 
selection  by  conflict  may  have  a  salutary  element  in  it, 
and  may  therefore  persist  for  ages ;  but  should  it  not  be 
confined  to  exceptional  cases,  as  a  sort  of  final  unction  in 
extremis?    Perhaps  an  analysis  of  militarism  will  answer. 

'  It  will  not  come  until  such  sentiments  as  those  of  Professor  F.  von 
Luschan,  German  delegate  to  the  First  Universal  Races  Congress,  are  re- 
futed. "Racial  barriers,"  he  declared,  "will  never  cease  to  exist.  .  .  .  If  ever 
they  show  a  tendency  to  disappear,  it  will  certainly  be  better  to  preserve 
than  to  obliterate  them.  .  .  .  The  brotherhood  of  man  is  a  good  thing,  but 
the  struggle  for  life  is  a  far  better  one.  Athens  would  never  have  become 
what  it  was  without  Sparta,  and  national  jealousies  and  differences,  and  even 
the  most  cruel  wars  have  ever  been  the  real  causes  of  progress  and  mental 
freedom.  .  .  .  The  respect  due  by  the  white  races  to  other  races  and  by  the 
white  races  to  each  other  can  never  be  too  great,  but  natural  law  will  never 
allow  racial  barriers  to  fall,  and  even  national  boundaries  will  never  cease  to 
exist.  .  .  .  Nations  will  come  and  go,  but  racial  and  national  antagonisms 
will  remain ;  and  this  will  be  well,  for  mankind  would  become  like  a  herd  of 
sheep  if  we  were  to  lose  our  national  ambition.  ..." 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE   MILITARISTS 

War  is  the  everlasting  corollary  to  the  principle  of 
race  struggle.  Heraclitus,  I  believe,  is  responsible  for  the 
doleful  epigram  that  war  is  all.  And  he  has  had  able 
disciples.  Carlyle,  with  customary  grim  exaggeration, 
announced,  "The  ultimate  question  between  every  two 
human  beings  is,  'Can  I  kill  thee,  or  canst  thou  kill  me?'" 
Nietzsche  proposed  to  revise  the  Beatitudes  somewhat 
after  this  fashion :  "Ye  shall  love  peace  as  a  means  to  new 
wars ;  and  the  short  peace  better  than  the  long.  ...  Ye 
say,  a  good  cause  will  hallow  even  war  ?  I  say  unto  you  : 
a  good  war  halloweth  every  cause.  .  .  .  War  and  courage 
have  done  more  great  things  than  charity.  ...  Be  hard, 
..."  etc.  Ferri  adds  his  mite  with  the  sentiment, 
"Truly  the  human  race  progresses  by  two  uplifting  ener- 
gies :  war  and  labor."  Recently  a  group  of  Futurist 
poets,  among  them  Signor  Marinetti,  has  proposed  to  glorify 
war,  "  the  only  true  hygiene  of  the  world."  Anatole  France 
makes  one  of  his  characters  say  that  "man  may  be  defined 
as  an  animal  with  a  musket."  But  while  M.  France  was 
bitterly  ironic,  many  of  his  contemporaries  would  have 
taken  his  definition  in  all  seriousness.  To  Professor  Stein- 
metz,  for  example,  war  is  not  a  mere  human  foible ;  it  is 
an  ordeal  estabhshed  by  God  for  the  welding  of  nations ; 
it  is  the  essential  form  and  function  of  the  state ;  only 
in  warlike  states  can   human  nature  adequately  develop 

287 


288  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

its  full  capacities.  Benjamin  Kidd  makes  war  the  selective 
agency  between  nations,  and  indeed  their  chief  business. 
Not  because  of  its  scientific  value  (for  it  is  naively  ridic- 
ulous), but  because  it  epitomizes  the  philosophy  and  the 
code  of  conduct  of  a  considerable  section  of  modern  Ger- 
many, must  be  cited  General  F.  von  Bernhardi  and  his 
book,  Germany  and  the  Next  War.  The  three  most  signifi- 
cant theoretical  chapters  in  this  singular  work  are  entitled 
"The  Right  to  Make  War,"  "The  Duty  to  Make  War," 
and  "World  Power  or  Downfall."  He  deplores  the  habit 
of  regarding  war  as  a  curse  and  refusing  to  "recognize  it  as 
the  greatest  factor  in  the  furtherance  of  culture  and  power." 
He  states  boldly  his  thesis  in  these  unmitigated  terms  : 

"I  must  try  to  prove  that  war  is  not  merely  a  necessary 
element  in  the  life  of  nations,  but  an  indispensable  factor 
of  culture,  in  which  a  true  civilized  nation  finds  the  highest 
expression  of  strength  and  vitality." 

That  is,  war  is  not  a  mere  incident  in  the  life  of  nations, 
but  their  highest  aim  and  at  the  same  time  the  worthiest 
means  for  realizing  that  aim.  From  every  standpoint, 
he  declares,  war  is  necessary  and  inevitable :  natural  law, 
biological  necessity,  man's  nature,  a  supposed  right  of 
conquest,  a  very  explicit  law  that  makes  might  the  supreme 
right,  the  very  nature  of  the  state,  moral  necessity,  national 
health,  the  Christian  religion,  idealism,  and  other  consider- 
ations all  conspire  to  this  one  great  end.  "Theinevita- 
bleness,  the  ideahsm,  and  the  blessing  of  war,  as  an  indis- 
pensable and  stimulating  law  of  development,  must  be 
repeatedly  emphasized."  Hence,  "God  will  see  to  it,"  as 
Treitschke  declared,  "that  war  always  recurs  as  a  drastic 
medicine  for  the  human  race  !" 

Waitz,  the  veteran  anthropologist,  was  more  discriminat- 
ing.    While    recognizing    that    war    through    its    wastage 


THE  MILITARISTS  289 

hindered  progress,  he  held  that  it  roused  nations  from 
psychical  indolence  and  lethargy,  stimulated  effort  and 
invention,  and  wrought  cohesion.  Tylor  also  bears  wit- 
ness to  its  consolidating  effect,  as  revealed  in  the  sinking 
of  private  quarrels,  subordination  to  leadership,  and  larger 
patriotism.  Spencer,  although  an  avowed  anti-militarist, 
hating  the  base  treacheries  and  brutal  aggressions  of  the 
military  spirit,  refused  to  let  his  feelings  blind  him  to  the 
proofs  that  inter-social  conflicts  have  furthered  the  develop- 
ment of  social  structures.  Bagehot  claims  that  all  Euro- 
pean history  has  been  the  history  of  the  superposition  of 
the  more  military  races  over  the  less  military,  hence  the 
history  of  efforts  to  improve  the  art  of  war.  This  meant 
the  focusing  of  intelligence,  invention  and  moral  sentiment 
upon  the  supreme  military  virtues,  coherence,  discipline, 
obedience,  veracity,  valor.  Everywhere  the  compact 
tribes  win,  and  the  compact  tribes  are  tamest  from  the 
very  necessity  of  presenting  solid  fronts  to  their  enemies. 
Lester  F.  Ward  also,  while  careful  to  premise  that  if 
sociology  has  any  utihtarian  purposes,  one  of  them 
is  certainly  to  diminish  or  mitigate  the  horrors  of  war, 
goes  on  to  assert  that  for  pure  sociology  war  has 
been  the  chief  and  leading  condition  of  human  prog- 
ress, and  that  for  all  primitive  races  peace  means  social 
stagnation.^ 

Certain  of  these  general  claims  will  bear  closer  exami- 
nation. First,  in  the  absence  of  historical  proofs  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  estabhsh  that  the  germ  of  most  of  the  mechanic 
arts  lay  in  the  primordial  arts  of  strife  as  practiced  against 
beast  and  fellow-man.  But  this  theory  has  been  advanced 
with  considerable  show  of  authority.     Mason,  for  example, 

*  Waitz,   Introd.    to    Anthropology,   346   ff. ;   Tylor,  Anthropology,   432; 
Spencer,  Princ.  of  Sociology,  sec.  435 ;  Bagehot,  Physics  and  Politics,  section 
on  "The  Use  of  Conflict";   cf.  Ross,  PiM.  Amer.  Social.  Soc,  vol.  x,  pp. 
2-4 ;  Ward,  Pure  Sociology,  238. 
u 


290 


THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


at  the  end  of  an  impressive  chapter  on  the  primitive  art 
of  war  concludes  that  war,  at   least   in   primitive  times, 
stands  forth  preeminently  as  an  incitement  to  the  genius 
of  invention  and  discovery.^     But,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
say  that  the  offensive  weapons  are  nearly  always  the  same 
for  hunting  and  war,  or  that  the  same  magical  and  religious 
rites  accompany  both,  does  not  mean  that  tools  always 
had  their  origin  in  weapons.     The  reverse  may  be  equally 
true.     The  whole  history  of  warfare  was  revolutionized 
by  the  discovery  of  lire  and  the  art  of  working  metals. 
Another  enormous  leap  was  made  possible  by  the  invention 
of  the  wheel.     Still  another  by  the  researches  of  the  inoffen- 
sive  German  priest   and   his   English   rival,   Friar  Roger 
Bacon,  who  gave  to  the  world  the  dubious  invention  of 
gunpowder.     Finally,   the  discovery  of  steam  and  other 
motor-driven  machinery  has  permitted  military  movements 
that  would  have  stupefied  and  overwhelmed  earlier  cap- 
tains of  war. 

Second,  from  the  standpoint  of  group  conflicts  soli- 
darity is  perhaps  the  supreme  social  virtue.  More  than 
that,  it  is  the  price  of  individual  as  well  as  social  sur- 
vival. There  is  no  question  but  that  war  has  contributed 
in  all  ages  to  secure  this  necessary  coherence.  It  evokes 
common  interests  and  emphasizes  the  habits  of  attention 
and  obedience.  It  provides  for  a  certain  amount  of  in- 
dividual variability,  originaHty,  and  inventive  genius.  It 
aids  in  the  creation  of  those  common  sentiments  and 
desires  which  make  up  the  social  reality.     How  war  acts 

1  Origins  of  Invention,  pp.  408-09 ;  Cf.  Sumner,  War,  etc.,  p.  30  :  "In  his- 
tory the  military  inventions  have  led  the  way  and  have  been  afterwards  ap- 
plied to  industry.  .  .  .  The  skill  of  artisans  has  been  developed  in  making 
weapons,  and  then  that  skill  has  been  available  for  industry." 

"All  the  pure  and  noble  arts  of  peace  are  founded  on  war :  no  great  art 
ever  yet  rose  on  earth  but  among  a  nation  of  soldiers.  .  .  .  You  must  have 
war  to  produce  art  .  .  ."  (Ruskin,  Crown  of  Wild  Olives), 


THE   MILITARISTS  29 1 

as  a  religious  unifier  may  be  illustrated  from  the  history  of 
the  Israelitish  campaigns  against  their  heathen  neighbors, 
by  the  Arabic  invasions,  by  the  Crusades,  by  the  Spanish- 
Moorish  wars.  War  also  furnishes  the  occasion  for  intro- 
ducing doses  of  new  ideas  into  an  otherwise  perhaps  stag- 
nating society.  The  introduction  of  captives,  whether 
as  slaves  or  by  a  process  of  absorption  by  marriage  or  other- 
wise, must  have  had  a  profound  and  permanent  effect 
when  tribes  were  small.  Waitz  is  inclined  perhaps  to  under- 
estimate this  effect  and  to  consider  that  if  there  is  any 
positive  effect  it  would  be  merely  transitory.  But  it 
was  not  mere  literary  bravado  that  prompted  the  famous 
aphorism  that  captive  Greece  took  captive  her  rude  con- 
querors. The  Hebrew  myth  of  Esther,  all  due  allowance 
made  for  national  egotism  and  errors  of  transcription, 
indicates  a  similar  conquering  invasion  of  ideas.  This 
form  of  conquest  is  not  always  without  certain  counter- 
vailing disadvantages.  Japan,  for  example,  received  Chi- 
nese learning  in  the  third  century  a.d.,  and  Buddhism  fol- 
lowed in  the  sixth  to  the  eighth  centuries.  Two  results 
followed.  Manners  were  softened,  and  art  and  literature 
were  refined.  On  the  other  hand,  Japan's  primitive 
ruggedness  was  weakened.  Military  and  political  effi- 
ciency declined.  A  strong  central  government  ceded 
to  feudal  anarchy.  Epicureanism,  monasticism,  and 
priestly  predominance  ultimated  in  moral  and  poHtical 
degradation. 

It  is  freely  granted  that  war  has  been  a  valuable  school- 
master to  the  race  in  the  past,  that  it  has  been  perhaps  the 
means  of  welding  large  coherent  masses  out  of  tiny  scat- 
tered groups,  nations  out  of  tribelets.  But  these  amalga- 
mations made,  is  it  still  a  force  for  progress  ?  Is  it  a  perma- 
nent and  unavoidable  element  in  future  history  if  mankind 
is  to  mount  higher?     The  peace  societies  say  no,  but  their 


292  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

voices  have  not  yet  been  caught  up  by  the  world,  even  the 
scientific  world,  in  unanimity.  Over  three  hundred  years 
ago  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  voiced  the  opinion  that  the  general 
who  leads  an  army  to  a  war  which  kills  many,  sometimes 
does  a  service  greater  than  he  knows,  by  relieving  a  con- 
gested country  of  its  surplus ;  for,  said  he,  a  state  can  have 
so  great  a  population  that  it  becomes  sick.  We  may  neg- 
lect the  naive  theory  of  population  here  involved :  we 
may  also  forgive  Sir  Walter  his  lack  of  grasp  of  economic 
principles,  for  the  economic  wastes  of  warfare  are  com- 
paratively recent  discoveries.  But  we  really  need  not  be 
patronizing  to  the  least  degree  in  granting  him  such  indul- 
gences, for  without  them  he  stands  the  test  of  comparison 
with  certain  modern  scientists  obsessed  by  notions  of  selec- 
tion. Professor  Karl  Pearson  is  one  of  these.  His  address 
on  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science  is  an  elo- 
quent, almost  passionate,  defense  of  war  in  the  service  of 
natural  selection.  Incidentally  he  takes  a  stand  almost 
identical  with  Sir  Walter's  :  mankind  must  choose  between 
the  bitter  alternatives  of  race  struggle  or  physical  selec- 
tion through  over-population,  famine,  and  pestilence,  and 
experience  proves  that  war  will  do  a  cleaner  job  of  it.^ 
Those,  however,  who  are  not  fuddled  with  the  new  wine 
of  imperialism  nor  hypnotized  by  doctrinaire  science  will 
be  more  inclined  to  search  for  other  alternatives  and  to 
listen  to  other  counsellors ;  namely,  the  men  who  by  apply- 
ing the  principle  of  cost  accounting  to  human  history  have 
reached  the  sober  conclusion  that  while  war  has  destroyed 
the  worn-out  and  effete,  it  has  done  so  at  such  tremendous 
costs  that  civilization  moved  on  with  leaden  feet  if  it  moved 
at  all. 

^  Op.  cil.,  pp.  34-5  ;  cf.  Knox,  Forum,  3  :  96 ;  Brooks  Adams,  Piihl.  Anier. 
Social.  Soc,  vol.  x,  pp.  103-124;  B.  L.  Putnam  Weale,  The  Coming  Struggle 
in  Eastern  Asia,  626,  etc. 


THE  MILITARISTS  293 

In  spite  of  benefits  presumably  conferred  by  war,  it  is 
apparently  by  no  means  an  unmixed  blessing.  Indeed, 
many  of  our  most  profound  thinkers  are  disposed  to  fleny 
any  virtue  whatever  to  war,  and  to  assert  that  whatever 
progress  we  have  made  has  come  not  through  war  but  in 
spite  of  it.  One  of  the  very  last  of  M.  Novicow's  papers 
was  a  brilliant  exposition. of  this  idea  in  reply  to  M.  Gaul- 
tier's  criticism  of  his  book  on  Social  Darwinism}  He  sees 
a  fundamental  difference  between  struggle  {lutte)  and  war 
{guerre).  Progress  is  due  to  struggle,  its  set-backs  to  war. 
In  another  more  extended  work,  Les  Luttes  entre  les  societes 
humaines,  he  shows  clearly  how  advance  is  the  result  of 
struggle  between  ideas,  ideals,  languages,  and  how  the 
struggle  by  arms  has  been  a  real  retarding  influence.  His 
critic,  M.  Gaultier,  perhaps  unwittingly,  illustrates  just 
this  warfare  of  ideas.  The  pacifism  of  some  ideologues, 
he  says,  is  but  a  paradoxical  form  of  the  warlike  instinct 
itself.^  But  why  not  say  that  it  is  a  natural  expression  of 
the  instinct  for  struggle?  Does  to  compete  mean  only  to 
bite  or  to  stab?  May  it  not  mean  also  good-tempered 
rivalry?  Are  we  forced  to  believe  that  economic  compe- 
tition, athletic  contests,  zeal  for  the  spread  of  a  particular 
theory  in  science  or  religion,  are  watered  or  faded  forms  of 
the  warlike  instinct?  Is  it  not  equally  proper  to  consider 
that  war  is  a  debased  form  of  the  instinct  to  compete? 
At  least  it  will  not  do  to  assume  by  ipse  dixit  that 
war  is  the  more  fundamental  form  of  this  competitive 
impulse. 

War  is  only  one  expression  of  man's  fundamental  energy. 
The  real  argument  against  war  can  never  be  that  it  is 
force,  and  that  force  is  inherently  and  eternally  evil. 
Force  is  neither  good  nor  bad.  Only  stupid  kings  or  popes 
have  flogged  the  waves  and  excommunicated  comets,  and 

^  Mercure  de  France,  191 1,  pp.  5-28,  ^Ibid.,  xcii,  65-94. 


294  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

they  did  it  only  because  the  force  seemed  personally  hos- 
tile to  themselves.  War  is  violence ;  true,  but  violence 
is  only  force  running  wild  without  constructive  purpose. 
Even  non-resistance  is  an  intense  apphcation  of  force  to 
oneself.  What  particular  form  of  manifesting  force  shall 
be  adopted  in  attaining  a  particular  end  must  be  deter- 
mined by  the  pragmatic  test  of  economy  of  effort  and 
civilized  goods. ^ 

Another  assumption  cannot  be  passed  without  question, 
namely,  the  notion  that  primitive  men  are  always  in  a 
state  of  war.  This  is  by  no  means  true.  The  successes 
of  our  animal  forbears,  the  social  monkeys,  came  no  doubt 
more  from  agility  of  limb  than  from  capacity  to  fight. 
Similarly,  savages  prefer  avoiding  to  precipitating  a  fight. 
I  am  rather  suspicious  of  the  Cockney  phrase  of  "having 
your  monkey  up."  It  is  picturesque  as  an  unconscious 
satire  on  the  thorough-going  natural  selectionist.  But  it 
is  no  more  accurate  than  is  that  other  way  of  announcing 
that  a  man  is  angry,  namely,  that  he  "has  his  Irish  up"; 
or  that  when  a  man  does  something  he  ought  not  to  do  "  the 
old  Adam  comes  out"  in  him.  Now  both  Adam  and  the 
monkeys  were  rather  peaceable,  pusillanimous,  frugiferous 
creatures,  who  fought,  like  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek  and 
Olivia,  only  when  they  were  plumped  into  each  other. 
Man  in  the  most  primitive  and  uncivilized  state  does  not 
practice  war  all  the  time.  Real  warfare  comes  only  with 
the  collisions  of  more  developed  societies. ^ 

Savages  fight,  undoubtedly,  but  how?  In  some  parts 
of  the  world  quarrels  between  tribes  are  often  settled  by  a 

*  See  Professor  John  Dewey's  suggestive  article  in  The  New  Republic, 
Jan.  22,  1916,  pp.  295-7. 

2  See  W.  G.  Sumner,  War  and  Other  Essays,  p.  31.  Mason  adds  corrobo- 
ration :  "  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  war  was  ever  the  normal  occupation 
of  any  people.  As  now,  so  in  all  ages,  war  is  an  incident,  an  outbreak,  a 
frenzy  that  soon  exhausts  itself."     {Origins  of  Invention,  368.) 


THE  MILITARISTS  295 

single  combat  between  chiefs.  Real  fighting  is  rare  and 
even  then  is  only  carried  on  by  taunts  and  wrestling,  a  war 
of  words  and  hair-pulling.  The  first  wound  ends  the  com- 
bat. Some  tribes  of  New  Guinea  have  no  offensive  weap- 
ons at  all.  In  certain  islands  of  German  Melanesia  war  is 
entirely  unknown.  Livingstone  reported  that  the  tribes 
of  Central  South  Africa  seldom  resorted  to  war  except 
about  cattle,  and  that  on  that  account  some  tribes  refused 
to  keep  cattle  in  order  to  avoid  temptation.  These  cases 
are  typical  of  much  of  primitive  tribal  life.^  It  is  apparent 
that  such  petty  squabbles  are  not  to  be  dignified  by  the 
august  name  of  war  and  could  scarcely  contribute  to  social 
integrity  or  discipline. 

Solidarity,  or  social  integration,  we  said  awhile  ago,  is 
the  supreme  social  necessity.  But  integration  depends 
upon  other  things  besides  conflict.  Indeed,  from  many 
standpoints  war  tends  to  break  down  social  integrity. 
For  example,  it  destroys  the  economic  fabric,  it  separates 
families,  it  dissolves  political  bonds,  it  breaks  old  cultural 
links,  it  dries  up  the  streams  of  good  will,  it  abrogates 
standards  of  conduct  and  of  social  welfare  which  have 
taken  long  and  cost  much  to  establish.  We  said  that  war 
is  sometimes  a  religious  unifier.  But  not  always  so.  Our 
own  civil  war  illustrates  that.  Great  religious  bodies 
like  the  Presbyterians  and  Methodists  were  cleft  in  twain 
by  the  issues  at  stake  in  the  conflict. 

We  might  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  social  cohe- 
sion presumed  to  result  from  the  stress  of  war  must  in 
reality  precede  war,  and  that  the  whole  process  of  warfare 
would  be  impossible  without  the  cementing  principle  of 
sympathy  or  altruism.     This  is  the  position  taken  by  Tarde  : 

"In  reality  would  war  and  conquest  ever  have  accom- 
plished anything  other  than  to  divide  up  and  pulverize 

*  Cf.  others  in  Sumner,  War,  etc.,  pp.  4-7. 


296  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

humanity  to  infinity,  instead  of  collecting  it  into  sheaves, 
if  before,  during,  and  after  battles  and  victories,  the  instinct 
of  sympathy  which  causes  men,  even  when  fighting,  to 
reflect  one  another  in  everything,  had  not  been  continually 
acting  ?  .  .  .  The  labors  of  war  are  only  useful  to  the  extent 
to  which  they  serve  this  fruitful  instinct  by  overcoming 
obstacles  in  its  path.  Without  this  instinct  nothing  social 
can  exist,  not  even  war."  ^ 

Hence  we  must  look  beyond  war  for  the  integrating  prin- 
ciple. Pythagoras  said  it  was  love ;  Aristotle,  friendship. 
But  they  were  philosophers !  There  is  a  measure  of  truth 
in  Chatterton-Hill's  contention  that  religion  has  to  be 
invoked  to  restore  the  solidarity  which  war  breaks  down. 
Still  other  agencies  enter  to  dispute  with  war  the  primacy 
of  integration :  ties  of  blood  and  family,  totemism,  the 
cult  of  local  divinities,  the  common  fear  of  common  dangers 
from  the  unseen  world,  language,  the  possession  of  common 
economic  goods  and  processes  or  certain  cultural  advan- 
tages, secret  societies,  alcohol,  and,  by  no  means  of  least 
importance,  dancing. 

By  what  means,  asks  M.  Kreglinger,  can  primitive 
society  succeed  in  submitting  all  its  members  to  the  disci- 
pline indispensable  to  community  action  —  say,  fertilizing 
crops  by  magic,  magical  increase  of  fish,  game,  etc.  ?  The 
dance !  And  the  dance  only !  ^  Recalling  that  war  is 
only  a  man-hunt,  we  need  not  be  surprised  that  savages 
resort  to  the  dance  to  secure  that  unanimity  of  spirit  and 
that  willingness  to  subordinate  the  individual  will  for 
group  purposes  which  are  indispensable  to  successful  war- 
fare. "The  war-dance  is  a  war-play,  a  preparation  for 
common  action."  ^    Among  the  Iroquois  Indians, 

*  Penal  Philosophy,  sec.  q6. 

2  Bulletins  Mensuels  dc  rinsiitut  Solvay,  iii,  No.  20,  p.  629;  cf.  Kunike's 
article  in  Anthropos,  1912,  pp.  206—29. 
'  R.  Wallaschek,  Primitive  Music,  p.  274. 


THE  MILITARISTS  297 

"Any  person  was  at  liberty  to  organize  a  war-party  and 
conduct  an  expedition  wherever  he  pleased.  He  announced 
his  project  by  giving  a  war-dance  and  inviting  volunteers. 
This  method  furnished  a  practical  test  of  the  popularity 
of  the  undertaking.  If  he  succeeded  in  forming  a  company, 
which  would  consist  of  such  persons  as  joined  him  in  the 
dance,  they  departed  immediately,  while  enthusiasm  was  at  its 
height.  When  a  tribe  was  menaced  with  an  attack,  war- 
parties  were  formed  to  meet  it  in  much  the  same  manner."  ^ 

I  have  italicized  the  phrase  about  utilizing  enthusi- 
asm at  its  height,  because  in  that  phrase  lies  the  key  to 
this  whole  question  of  social  solidarity.  It  was  not  the 
fact  of  war  but  the  fact  that  unity  of  idea  and  sentiment 
had  been  worked  up  regarding  the  motives  and  methods 
of  warfare  that  constituted  the  social  discipline  of  warfare. 
Further  support  is  given  this  presumption  from  the  role 
played  by  dancing  in  the  attempts  at  social  reintegration 
through  peace  overtures.  Many  kinds  of  songs  and  dances 
were  in  vogue  among  the  Carolina  Indians  in  the  seven- 
teenth century :  not  the  least  important  of  these  was 
the  peace  ratification  dance,  for  which  several  towns  and 
sometimes  different  'nations'  gathered  to  celebrate  the 
end  of  dissension  and  the  promise  of  future  good  will.^ 
More  recent  evidence  confirms  this  observation.  When 
the  Sun  Dance,  the  most  important  rite  of  the  Plains 
Indians,  was  to  be  celebrated,  messengers  were  sent  out 
to  invite  all  the  tribes  privileged  to  participate.  Some  of 
the  visitors  were  hereditary  enemies ;  that  mattered  not 
during  the  sun-dance :  they  visited  one  another ;  they 
shook  hands  and  formed  alliances.' 

The  supreme  value  of  the  primitive  dance  lay  in  the  fact 
that  it  offered  every  member  of  the  tribe  an  opportunity 

^  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  Part  II,  chap.  iv. 

^  Lawson,  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  285. 

'  Webster,  Primitive  Secret  Societies,  31,  after  Bushotter  and  Dorsey. 


298  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

to  participate ;  and  the  whole  tribe  did  actually  participate 
so  long  as  it  cohered  as  a  tribe. ^  Miss  Barbara  Freire- 
Marreco,  writing  of  the  Indians  of  the  arid  Southwest,  says : 

"They  dance  out  their  society.  The  dance  is  both  the 
measure  and  the  machinery  of  organization.  In  a  pueblo, 
you  sum  up  political  discord  in  one  word  when  you  say 
that  'all  the  people  are  not  dancing  together.'  And 
when  a  reconciliation  is  in  progress  it  would  be  hard  to 
say  whether  the  accompanying  dance  more  truly  expresses 
the  movement  or  brings  it  about.  A  revival  of  social  sol- 
idarity means  a  revival  of  dancing."  ^ 

Such  practices  suggest  that  what  confers  group  solidarity 
is  not  so  much  war  as  it  is  belief  in  the  efhcacy  of  magic, 
charms,  priests,  and  gods ;  moreover,  that  dancing  is  not 
mere  pastime  but  a  magical  ritual  as  well.  War  is  a  crisis 
to  be  met.  The  common  belief,  the  common  religious 
tradition,  the  common  magical  practice  nerves  and  con- 
solidates the  group  to  meet  the  test.  The  magical  aspect 
of  warfare  is  not  confined  to  preparations  for  it  but  also 
runs  clear  through  the  actual  hostilities  themselves.  In- 
deed magic  cuts  so  large  a  figure  in  primitive  warfare, 
so  many  struggles  are  fought  out  vicariously  by  magicians, 
that  one  is  inclined  to  suspect  the  common  assumption 
that  clash  of  arms  always  decides  relative  merit.  To  the 
warrior  and  his  accouterments  (if  we  demand  a  complete 
account  of  early  military  equipment)  must  be  added  the 
priest,  the  sorcerer,  omens,  oracles,  dreams,  auspices,  and 
spells.  These  elements  from  the  "imaginary  environment" 
supply  the  cement  for  group  cohesion.^ 

^  Cf.  Wallaschek,  op.  cil.,  p.  278. 

2  Sociological  Review,  iv,  328.  Cf.  my  Primitive  Family  as  an  Educational 
Agency,  pp.  213  ff.  for  further  details. 

^  See  R.  Holsti's  illuminating  article,  "Some  Superstitious  Customs  and 
Beliefs  in  Primitive  Warfare,"  in  Festskrift  tillegnad  Edvard  Weslermarck, 
PP-  137-75- 


THE  MILITARISTS  299 

War  is  honored  as  the  great  agent  in  diffusing  culture 
and  in  the  development  of  culture  unity  among  the  nations 
of  the  earth,  through  paving  the  way  for  race  contacts 
and  cross-fertilization  of  cultures.  But  commerce  is  also 
a  means  of  culture  contacts.  Trade  follows  the  flag : 
quite  true,  but  it  is  notorious  that  the  flag,  'manifest  des- 
tiny,' and  rifles  follow  trade.  Indeed,  in  no  small  sense, 
war  with  all  its  trappings  and  hullabaloo  is  only  one  small 
fraction  of  industrial  organization.  Soldiers  frequently 
bring  back  with  them  as  the  best  part  of  their  loot  new 
ideas,  new  women,  new  inventions.  They  may  also  bring 
back  widened  views  of  the  reach  of  mankind,  a  new  respect 
for  their  antagonists,  a  new  sense  of  the  unity  of  the  race. 
Yet  the  chances  are  rather  that  they  will  return  with  their 
own  ethnocentrism  or  provincialism  heightened.  More- 
over, war  tends  to  secrete  a  hard  shell  about  the  combat- 
ants that  renders  them  impervious  to  any  but  most  super- 
ficial exchanges  of  ideas  or  sentiments. 

The  advocates  of  war  as  the  great  selector  of  the  strong, 
the  vigorous,  the  brave,  seem  to  forget  that  the  process 
is  negative.  War  selects  men  to  die,  not  to  live  and  radiate 
or  propagate  virility  and  valor.  Or  it  marks  them  for  slow 
consuming  by  disease  or  habitual  idleness  or  debauchery. 
Recall  the  German  proverb,  that  every  war  leaves  behind 
it  three  armies,  an  army  of  heroes,  an  army  of  cripples,  and 
an  army  of  thieves.  We  might  add  another,  the  army  of 
slaves.  And  slavery  always  reacts  as  a  selective  agency 
for  the  inferior  elements  in  a  population.  In  Rome,  where 
long-continued  wars  had  begotten  the  habit  of  dependence 
upon  war  captives  for  labor  power,  breeding  of  slaves  was 
resorted  to  when  the  wars  no  longer  brought  sufficient 
levies  of  captives.  Sexual  vices,  laziness,  decline  of  energy 
and  enterprise,  cowardice,  and  contempt  for  honest  labor 
marked  the  free  and  favored  who  were  the  unfortunate 


300  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

beneficiaries  of  slave-power.^  Rome  fell  because  this 
form  of  artificial  selection  cooperated  with  selection  by 
civil  war,  proscription  and  foreign  campaigns  of  conquest, 
by  means  of  which  her  best  stocks  were  extinguished.^ 
I  will  not  go  so  far  as  to  say  with  Jordan  that  only  cowards 
and  weaklings  were  left.  But  I  am  convinced  that  the 
flower  of  the  Republic  was  blighted  either  directly  or  in- 
directly by  the  five  centuries  of  warfare.  -And  I  agree 
unreservedly  in  Jordan's  general  conclusion  that  the  war- 
like nation  of  to-day  is  the  decadent  nation  of  to-morrow. 
Moreover,  modern  warfare  is  probably  vastly  more  dis- 
genic  in  its  effects  upon  a  population  than  more  primi- 
tive military  enterprises  could  have  been.  And  the 
newer  developments  in  sanitary  science  have  not  yet 
nullified  these  heavier  risks.  War  still  selects  the 
parasite  and  corrupts  the  streams  of  social  strength 
and  sanity.  It  spells,  not  progress,  but  retrogression 
of  the  species. 

Alfred  de  Musset  has  left  us  by  all  odds  the  most  finished 
and  at  the  same  time  the  truest  and  most  exact  analysis 
of  this  maleficent  military  selection.  He  himself  was  born 
of  the  Napoleonic  era  of  blood  and  iron  which  wiped  out 
nearly  four  million  selected  men.  He  was  part  of  a  gen- 
eration, as  he  declares,  ardent,  pale,  nervous,  flabby- 
muscled,  melancholy,  conceived  between  two  battles,  edu- 
cated in  the  colleges  to  the  roll  of  drums. 

"It  was  a  stainless  air  radiant  with  glory,  resplendent 
with  sparkling  steel,  that  these  children  breathed.  They 
knew  that  they  were  destined  to  the  hecatombs  —  but 
they  believed  Murat  invincible ;  and  they  had  seen  the 
emperor  pass  over  a  bridge  with  bullets  whistling  so  thick 
that  no  mortal   man   might   live.  .  .  .     Every   cradle   in 

*  Cf.  Seeck,  Unlergang  der  antiken  Welt,  ii,  chap.  iv. 

*  Cf.  Jordan,  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  59 :  129. 


THE  MILITARISTS  301 

France  was  a  helmet,  every  coffin  as  well.  And  there  were 
no  longer  any  aged  —  there  were  only  corpses  or  demi- 
gods." ^ 

Only  corpses  or  demigods  in  France !  Cripples  and 
thieves  as  well  as  heroes  in  Germany !  And  neither  Mul- 
hall  nor  the  Almanach  de  Gotha  can  tell  us  how  far  the 
battered  wrecks  outnumber  the  demigods  and  the  heroes. 

It  is  currently  believed  that  the  real  significance  of  the 
Mohammedan  conquests  lay  in  the  prowess  of  the  Arab 
armies.  It  may  be  that  Europe  was  scared  into  unity  by 
those  armies,  and  that  this  temporary  unity  was  good  is 
unquestionable.  But  the  fierce  tornado  of  militarism 
which  swept  Europe  from  the  seventh  to  the  ninth  cen- 
turies was  a  positive  check  not  only  to  European  but  to 
Mussulman  civilization  as  well.  M.  A.  Le  Chatelier,  pro- 
fessor of  Mussulman  Sociology  at  the  College  de  France, 
writing  of  the  economic  position  of  Islam,  declares  that  a 
century  after  the  death  of  Mahomet,  the  Arab  empire  sur- 
passed that  of  Alexander,  and  as  heirs  of  Greek  science  the 
Mussulmans  had  improved  upon  it.  But  progress  in 
civilization  (taking  Bagdad  as  typical  with  its  university, 
astronomy,  and  chemistry)  dechned  as  Turkish  and  Mon- 
gol militarism  advanced. ^  War  had  welded  Mohammedan 
Asia  and  Africa  into  a  factitious  sort  of  unity,  but  had 
moved  the  center  of  world  culture  and  learning  from  Bag- 
dad to  Western  Europe.  A  similar  shifting  might  be  said 
to  have  operated  in  Western  Europe  since  1870.  The  reign 
of  materialism  began  in  Germany  immediately  after  the 
sentiment  of  national  unity  generated  by  Bismarck's  suc- 
cessful wars  against  Austria  and  France  had  abated.  The 
armies  of  France  were  shattered ;  but  the  treasures  of  Ger- 
man ideahsm   had  been  rifled  in  the  victory.     Business 

^  La  Confession  d'un  enfant  du  Steele,  chap.  ii. 
^  Revtie  economique  inter nationale,  1910. 


302  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

has  grown  apace,  but  the  Empire  has  produced  no  succes- 
sors to  the  philosophers  or  humanists  of  the  German  states 
a  hundred  years  ago. 

It  is  obvious  that  war  must  affect  both  the  form  and 
content  of  social  organization.  And  it  is  equally  obvious 
to  the  candid  observer  that  its  contribution  of  ideas  to  the 
social  melting  pot  is  by  no  means  without  dross.  Professor 
Veblen  punctures  the  vainglorious  militarist  on  this  score. 

"Habituation  to  war,"  he  says,  "entails  a  body  of  pred- 
atory habits  of  thought,  whereby  clannishness  in  some 
measure  replaces  the  sense  of  solidarity,  and  a  sense  of 
invidious  distinction  supplants  the  impulse  to  equitable, 
everyday  serviceability.  As  an  outcome  of  the  cumula- 
tive action  of  these  factors,  the  generation  which  follows 
a  season  of  war  is  apt  to  witness  a  rehabilitation  of  the 
element  of  status,  both  in  its  social  life  and  in  its  scheme 
of  devout  observances  and  other  symbolic  or  ceremonial 
forms."  ^ 

Ritual  and  anthropomorphism  are  emphasized.  The 
deity  becomes  a  God  of  Battles.  Titles  are  flung  about; 
everybody  craves  military  rank.  The  'bloody  rag'  is 
waved  in  season  and  out.  Pensions  become  the  football 
of  dirty  politics.  Chauvinism  fans  the  fire.  Meanwhile 
conservatism  and  complacent  regard  for  predatory  finance 
dominate  the  industrial  organization.  Truly  the  God  of 
Battles  wields  a  two-edged  sword.  And  mere  mortal 
man  brandishing  his  sword  is  open  to  all  the  wounds  and 
dangers  of  a  puling  infant  in  his  first  encounter  with  a 
pair  of  scissors. 

Why  does  mihtary  preoccupation  and  success  mean 
loss  of  civilization?  Precisely  because  it  is  a  preoccupa- 
tion, precisely  because  it  becomes  a  fixed  idea,  a  mono- 
mania,  a  fatal  concentration  of  energies.     Mankind  are 

*  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class,  373. 


THE  MILITARISTS  303 

essentially  active,  spenders  of  energy.  But  their  store 
of  energy  is  limited.  It  pours  into  the  two  great  channels 
of  self-preservation  at  a  given  level  and  of  striving  to  raise 
the  level.  Manifestly,  if  a  disproportionate  share  of  energy 
is  drained  off  into  mere  sustenance-getting,  but  httle  can 
remain  for  the  "wages  of  going  on."  As  in  primitive  life 
the  food-quest  monopolized  time  and  energy  and  left  an 
infinitesimal  margin  for  avowedly  cultural  activities,  so 
in  all  times  of  warfare,  whether  for  real  or  fancied  motives 
of  defense  or  conquest  of  bases  of  subsistence,  all  the 
constructive  energies  of  a  people  are  drained  off  into  mili- 
tary operations.  Is  it  to  be  wondered  at,  then,  that  in 
consequence  the  greatest  advance  steps  in  art  and  science 
have  been  made  in  moderately  fertile  countries  and  peace- 
ful times?  War  threatens  the  existence  of  both  opposing 
parties ;  for  the  issues  of  it  are  always  in  the  balance.  And 
when  existence  is  threatened  there  is  neither  time,  energy, 
nor  inclination  for  advance.^ 

The  inevitable  inference  is  that  the  abolition  of  war 
would  not  plunge  the  world  into  a  dangerous  lethargy, 
nor  would  it  engender  corruption.  To  the  contrary,  his- 
tory shows  that  the  ages  most  notorious  for  their  mental 
and  spiritual  lethargy,  for  their  brute  stolidity,  for  their 
dogged  resistance  to  forward  movements,  were  just  the 
ages  of  overwrought  militarism.  If  in  some  cases  war 
seems  to  have  acted  as  a  prod  or  a  social  ferment,  it  does 
not  argue  that  it  is  the  mother  of  valor,  strength,  or  progress. 
Indeed,  in  general  we  may  say  that  all  the  virtues  supposed 
to  accrue  from  war  are  the  merest  by-products  incidental 
to  a  process  essentially  vicious.  It  may  well  be  that  hu- 
manity owes  much  of  its  progress  to  its  illusions  and 
adventurous  follies  —  to  wine,  religion,  altruism,  care  for 

*  Cf.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  "The  Irrationality  of  War,"  International  Concilia- 
tion Tracts,  No.  56. 


304  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

the  weak ;  but  merely  to  include  war  in  this  list  of  delusions 
or  follies  does  not  mean  that  it  is  or  ever  has  been  ipso 
facto  a  healthy  ferment  or  stimulus.  There  are  ferments 
which  poison  and  stimuh  which  deal  out  death.  Life  is 
tension,  death  the  relaxing  of  the  springs  of  life.  This 
maxim  applied  to  nations  accounts  for  those  constant 
oppositions,  emulations,  strains  and  stresses  that  exist 
and  must  exist  between  live  human  groups.  But  that  is 
far  from  saying  that  these  tensions  and  stresses  must  ex- 
press, or  ease  themselves  in  war,  or  that  war  is  the  only 
vital  process.  On  the  contrary,  war  is  often  the  depleter, 
the  exhauster,  the  relaxer,  that  overspans  and  snaps  the 
bow,  destroys  the  tension,  ultimates  in  slavery  and  death, 
and,  sadly  ironic  as  it  may  seem,  evokes  a  world's  mourning 
over  the  disappearance  of  a  race.  War  is  not  an  act,  but 
a  sentiment.  And  the  deadliest,  costliest  war  consists 
not  so  much  in  fighting  and  carnage,  armaments  and  cam- 
paigns, as  in  losses  by  suspicion,  envy,  hatred.  Murder 
in  the  broad  gospel  definition  is  not  only  to  kill  your  brother, 
but  to  hate  him.  Hatred  never  did  and  never  can  multiply 
the  strength  of  a  single  man  or  any  group  of  men.  Blind 
hatred  of  a  common  enemy  may  have  engendered  a  tempo- 
rary and  factitious  unity  and  therefore  have  conferred  a 
negative  sort  of  social  integration  in  the  past.  But  the 
principle  of  animosity,  particularly  when  institutionalized, 
can  never  be  accounted  as  a  force  for  real,  positive,  and  per- 
manent progress,  above  all  in  a  program  of  conscious,  willed 
social  advance.  We  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  distinc- 
tion between  war  as  a  determining  and  conditioning  factor 
in  human  evolution  and  war  as  an  agent  for  human  improve- 
ment and  advance.  Suicide  is  a  sociological  fact,  but  hardly 
a  progressive  force. 

But  the  instinct  of  struggle  remains,  and  no  sensible 
person  wants  to  emasculate  the  race.     Hence,  one  cannot 


THE  MILITARISTS  305 

help  feeling  that  Professor  Giddings  is  knocking  over  a 
straw  man  or  has  adopted  a  one-sided  view  of  social  life 
when  he  assures  us  that  —  ''All  activity  is  a  clash  of  atoms 
or  of  thoughts,  and  the  scientific  man  does  not  need  to 
waste  his  time  in  disputing  with  those  who  look  for  the 
elimination  of  strife  from  human  affairs."  He,  least  of 
all,  would  assert  that  strife  is  the  whole  of  social  life; 
his  own  doctrine  of  "consciousness  of  kind"  implies 
spontaneous  cooperations  and  alliances  as  well  as  hostili- 
ties and  suspicions.  Indeed,  no  one  is  more  pronounced 
in  his  advocacy  of  discussion  as  superior  to  violence  in 
the  settlement  of  group  differences.  Moreover,  one  may 
recognize  the  presence  and  the  function  of  strife  while  at 
the  same  time  urging  the  ehmination  of  some  of  the 
cruder  causes  of  strife.  Truth,  as  Mill  said,  is  mih- 
tant;  and  hke  the  church,  it  only  becomes  triumphant 
through  conflict.  But  such  a  conflict  implies  a  lack  of 
the  petty  passions  that  the  word  "  strife  "  connotes.  And 
the  weapons  of  truth  are  established  facts,  not  passion  or 
steel.  The  triumph  of  truth  is  not  a  squabble  but  an  ad- 
justment.    Old  Thomas  Fuller  declared  three  centuries  ago  : 

''I  love  stout  expressions  among  brave  men  and  to  have 
them  speak  as  they  think.  I  love  a  strong  and  manly 
famiharity  in  conversation ;  a  friendship  that  flatters 
itself  in  the  sharpness  and  vigor  of  communication.  When 
any  one  contradicts  me  he  raises  my  attention,  not  my 
anger ;  I  advance  toward  him  that  controverts,  that  in- 
structs me.  'Tis  a  dull  and  harmful  pleasure  to  have  to 
do  with  people  who  admire  us  and  approve  of  all  we  say." 

Here  we  have  in  brief  form  the  code  of  an  Age  of  Dis- 
cussion. It  is  indubitable  that  the  self-control,  the  honor, 
the  discipline,  involved  in  such  a  code  are  the  equal  of  the 
quaHties  derived  from  physical  combat ;  they  denote  a 
courage  much  higher   than  mere  instinct  of  self-defense, 


3o6  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

pugnacity,  or  physical  bravery.  And,  from  our  standpoint 
at  least,  they  are  a  far  safer  guide  than  the  mental  quahties 
hammered  out  in  physical  combat. 

It  is  not  a  question  of  killing  off  the  impulse  to  combat, 
but  of  taming  it,  or,  better  still,  of  utilizing  it  for  higher 
social  purposes.  Of  course,  so  long  as  individuals  fail 
to  respond  to  gentler  methods  of  social  control,  sheriffs 
and  police  will  be  necessary.  And,  with  all  due  regard  to 
extreme  pacifists,  so  long  as  nations  run  amuck  with  mad 
schemes  for  destroying  the  world's  peace,  warfare  as  a 
punitive  or  poHce  measure  must  continue  as  the  lesser  of 
two  evils.  But  the  war-police  methods  and  purposes  of, 
say,  a  League  to  Enforce  Peace,  are  fundamentally  differ- 
ent from  those  of  an  army  of  adventure  in  the  hands  of  a 
Napoleon  or  a  Hohenzollern.  Force  in  either  case ;  but 
force  rationally  applied  in  the  one  case,  force  blind,  irre- 
sponsible and  willful  in  the  other.  The  reduction  of  the 
area  of  violence  or  even  of  rational  force  is  a  mark  of  prog- 
ress; but  it  is  equally  true  that  to  remit  the  intelligent 
use  of  force  is  to  unloose  a  tornado  of  reckless  violence. 

There  are,  however,  a  host  of  problems  affecting  national 
honor  and  integrity  which  shrapnel  and  dreadnoughts 
cannot  solve;  and  they  are  vastly  more  important  than 
the  shifting  of  patches  of  color  on  the  map.  It  takes 
no  great  skill  or  genius  to  make  a  cannon  or  to  shoot 
straight.  But  it  taxes  man's  keenest  powers  to  discern 
the  causes  of  poverty  and  crime,  or  to  devise  ways  of  con- 
serving national  health  and  life.  William  James  in  his 
Moral  Equivalent  of  War  and  Professor  Stratton  in  his 
Control  of  the  Fighting  Instinct  have  suggested  numer- 
ous outlets  for  the  combative  impulse,  problems  which  leave 
no  doubt  that  the  heroic  will  not  die  out  if  lusty  youth 
applies  itself  to  their  solution.  The  prevention  of  destitu- 
tion, the  elimination  of  the  criminal,  the  cure  of  super- 


THE  MILITARISTS  307 

stition,  the  prevention  of  disease,  the  development  of  clean 
politics,  the  destruction  of  the  philosophy  and  art  of  "graft," 
the  reduction  of  profiteering,  the  attainment  of  a  high 
standard  of  sex  purity  in  young  men,  the  disengagement 
of  the  discussion  and  handling  of  inter-racial  problems 
from  the  domain  of  the  mob-mind  —  all  these  and  many 
others  are  enterprises  worthy  the  combative  powers  of  any 
vigorous  youth  and  sure  to  test  every  ounce  of  energy  in 
him.  Competitive  athletics  may  also  offer  to  a  limited 
extent  an  outlet  for  the  fighting  instinct. 

But  what  of  the  demand  for  universal  service?  Will 
it  not  postpone  the  substitution  of  such  equivalents?  Not 
necessarily.  Universal  service  need  not  frighten  anybody 
if  it  be  understood  as  community  service,  civil  conscrip- 
tion, universal  opportunity,  and  if  it  be  made  to  include 
other  forms  of  training  besides  mihtary  drill.  The  pri- 
mary objects  are  a  sense  of  community  responsibility  and  a 
measure  of  discipline.  If  these  can  be  had  only  at  the  price 
of  militarism  we  must  pay  it.  But  a  whole  array  of  facts 
and  experiences  warn  us  against  paying  such  a  price  '  with 
no  questions  asked.'  Perhaps  the  very  best  way  of  open- 
ing a  serious  offensive  upon  the  social  evils  which  still 
threaten  us  would  be  such  a  period  of  compulsory  enlist- 
ment for  pubHc  service. 

Combat  we  must  have,  then,  but  the  arena  and  the 
weapons  are  changing.  To  no  small  degree  the  rate  of 
change  depends  upon  educational  ideals  and  methods,  and 
upon  the  invention  of  non-military  sanctions  powerful 
enough  to  evoke  a  people's  supreme  efifort  to  unify  and 
express  itself.  The  pugnacious  impulse  in  its  most  destruc- 
tive forms  has  been  pretty  well  reduced  within  the  group 
through  social  control.  What  remains  could  be  canalized. 
But  until  some  similar  provision  is  made  for  eliminating 
the  war  impulse  through  international  agencies  for  control 


3o8  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

(such  as  the  proposed  League  to  Enforce  Peace),  until 
some  method  is  found  for  transvaluing  the  motive  of  na- 
tional fear,  and  until  some  more  reasonable  means  of  na- 
tional recreation  or  relaxation  from  the  tension  of  progress 
is  discovered,  the  hope  for  progress  through  the  arts  of 
peace  is  scarcely  more  than  a  counsel  to  illusion. 


CHAPTER   XX 
ON   PEACEFUL   GROUP   CONTACTS 

Migration  and  Cross-fertilization  of  Cultures 

Man  is  constantly  caught  between  the  upper  and  nether 
millstones  of  two  opposing  impulses,  the  instinct  to  root 
himself  to  the  soil  and  found  home  and  country,  and  the 
lure  of  wandering  without  lixed  ties  of  country.  Ulysses, 
the  Knights-errant,  and  recent  immigration  are  all  modern 
types  of  this  age-old  conflict  of  impulses.  The  tramp  and 
the  runaway  boy  are  its  less  pleasing  or  at  least  less  con- 
vincing manifestations.  Both  the  instinct  to  "stay  put" 
and  the  instinct  to  migrate  are  primarily  connected  with 
problems  of  the  food-quest.  But  they  have  a  far  wider 
significance  from  the  standpoint  of  human  progress.  Mi- 
gration itself  has  played  a  role  perhaps  second  to  none  as 
a  civilizing  force.  This  has  come  about  in  two  ways : 
first,  by  the  contact  with  new  physical  environments ; 
second,  by  new  human  group  contacts.  I  mean  here  espe- 
cially peaceful  contacts  rather  than  warlike  collisions. 

Isolation  of  the  individual  or  small  social  group  means 
stagnation  and  degeneracy.  AHenists  bid  us  look  for 
the  sources  of  insanity  not  only  in  the  hurly-burly  of  great 
cities  with  all  their  super-tense  living  conditions,  but  also 
in  the  monotonous  isolation  of  country  life.  Rural  peace 
spells  death,  unless  provided  with  contacts  through  books, 
telephones,  and  definitely  planned  institutions  for  social 
intercourse. 

309 


3IO  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

It  is  equally  true  that  no  race  ever  survived  a  period  of 
complete  isolation.  Even  comparative  isolation  tends 
to  produce  in  groups  that  gelatinoid  and  imbecile  sort 
of  mental  life  which  we  associate  with  poor  Kaspar  Hauser. 
Whether  the  isolation  is  natural  as  in  Austraha,  or  artificial 
as  in  China,  the  result  is  the  same.  The  Germans  in  the 
time  of  Tacitus  were  used  by  Max  Miiller  to  illustrate  the 
social  condition  of  the  Aryans  in  their  old  Asiatic  home. 
But  according  to  Dr.  Montelius,  a  Swedish  ethnologist, 
the  Teutons  had  been  in  Europe  from  two  to  four  thousand 
years.  Allowing  for  some  possible  exaggeration,  there 
still  is  convincing  evidence  that  these  peoples  had  '  marked 
time'  for  a  considerable  period.  The  explanation  lies  in 
their  remoteness  and  isolation,  which  was  to  a  high  degree 
geographic. 

No  group  is  self-fertilizing  in  its  culture  elements.  It  is 
possible  that  exogamous  mating  was  an  unconscious  work- 
ing out  of  some  feeling  that  continuous  inbreeding  within 
the  rather  narrow  consanguine  limits  of  a  primitive  group 
was  physically  degenerative.  The  importation  of  wives, 
even  by  forcible  capture,  was  deemed  necessary  for  keep- 
ing the  group  blood  fresh  and  strong.  But  the  importa- 
tion of  ideas  and  sentiments  was  of  incomparably  greater 
importance.  So  far  as  we  know,  no  human  group  in  the 
past  has  ever  pulled  itself  up  by  its  boot  straps.  It  rose, 
if  it  rose  at  all,  through  constant  repercussion  upon  other 
groups  more  or  less  alien  to  itself. 

This  is  equally  true  of  any  modern  community  which 
is  cut  off  from  the  main  currents  of  social  life,  or  which 
voluntarily  through  prejudice  elects  the  life  of  the  anchorite. 
Mr.  N.  L.  Sims,  in  his  excellent  study  of  A  Hoosier  Village, 
concludes  that  —  "not  a  single  important  change  has  been 
wrought  in  any  sphere  of  the  village  life  which  has  owed 
its  origin  primarily  to  the  community  itself.     The  forces 


ON  PEACEFUL  GROUP  CONTACTS  311 

have  come  from  without  in  the  form  of  various  kinds  of 
stimuli.  Its  activities  have  been  energized  and  vitalized 
by  disturbing  agencies  not  inherent  in  the  group  itself. 
These  extraneous  forces  have  been  chiefly  either  in  the 
form  of  crises  or  the  coming  of  new  personalities  into  the 
village."  ^  Among  these  crises  four  stand  out  as  epoch- 
making  for  the  village,  namely,  the  Civil  War,  the  great 
economic  expansion  and  prosperity  succeeding  it,  the  com- 
ing of  the  railroad,  and  the  rivalry  of  a  neighboring  town 
for  the  locating  of  a  college.  The  history-making  per- 
sonalities that  broke  the  village  cake  of  custom  included 
several  temperance  and  prohibition  agitators,  religious 
revivalists,  new  men  in  the  local  college  faculty,  and  more  or 
less  chance  visitors  who  had  seen  the  world  and  were  willing 
to  give  the  village  the  benefit  of  their  wider  experience. 

But  since  the  Teutons  were  migrants  it  is  evident  that 
migration  alone  does  not  bring  with  it  progress.  There 
must  be  something  stimulating  in  the  new  environment. 
Migration  means  the  throwing  overboard  of  many  old 
traditions.  It  may  also,  however,  mean  sedulously  re- 
taining some  of  them  as  mementoes  of  the  home  land.  A 
colony,  for  example,  may  retain  old  customs  and  laws  which 
the  mother  country  has  long  outgrown.  The  French 
language  in  Canada  is  not  the  French  of  twentieth  century 
republican  France,  but  the  French  of  Henri  Quatre.  We 
in  the  United  States  still  hang  on  to  many  English  common 
law  practices,  especially  in  criminal  procedure,  which 
England  long  ago  discarded. 

The  chief  disadvantages  of  migration  are  the  social 
instability  due  to  dislocation  from  a  settled  abode,  the 
impossibility  of  forming  regular  habits  of  labor,  the  engen- 
dering of  a  desire  for  constant  change.     Migration  to  a 

*  Columbia  University  Studies  in  History,  Economics,  and  Public  Law,  vol. 
46,  1912,  No.  3,  chap.  vii. 


312  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

poorer  country  may  expose  a  people  to  loss  of  what  stand- 
ards of  civilization  had  already  been  attained,  that  is,  if 
there  is  any  connection  between  a  good  and  plentiful 
standard  of  living  and  individual  or  social  strength.  Tran- 
sition suddenly  from  want  to  abundance  may  induce  a  gen- 
eral letting  down  of  the  stress  of  life  which  may  threaten 
not  only  substantial  progress  but  existence  itself.  Any 
study  of  frontier  life  will  illustrate  these  points.^ 

But  on  the  whole  the  results  of  race  migration  have  been 
as  good  as  the  movement  itself  seems  to  have  been  inevi- 
table. Usually,  except  as  in  the  case  of  recent  immigra- 
tion artificially  stimulated  by  transportation  companies, 
the  effort  to  migrate  requires  a  healthy  summing  up  and 
putting  forth  of  energies.  In  the  effort  to  adapt  to  new 
circumstances  the  mental  horizon  expands.  Friendly 
intercourse  with  new  peoples  may  be  established.  Even 
where  the  intercourse  is  downright  or  thinly  veiled  hostihty 
it  may  still  in  some  cases  stimulate  development. 

More  and  more  as  human  groups  build  up  coherent  masses 
of  ideas  into  customs,  laws,  systems  of  religion  and  art, 
the  significance  of  group  contacts  rendered  possible  by 
migration  is  expressible  less  in  terms  of  geography  or  new 
flora  and  fauna,  and  more  in  terms  of  conflicts,  borrowings, 
or  exchanges  of  ideas  and  sentiments.  Men  may  sit  at 
home  and  still  touch  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Race  contact 
becomes  preeminently  a  contact  of  cultures.  This  is  what 
we  mean  by  the  cross-fertilization  of  cultures.  No  two 
races  or  groups  can  ignore  each  other  when  brought  into 
proximity.  The  results  may  be  peaceful  or  hostile,  good 
or  bad ;  but  indifference  is  out  of  the  question.  An  im- 
pulse for  unity,  fusion,  or  leveling  seems  to  operate  as 

^  Cf.  Wsiitz,  Introduction  to  A7tthropology,  Collingwood  transl.,  pp.  344  fif. ; 
Turner,  Significance  of  the  Frontier  in  American  History;  Keller,  Societal 
Evolution,  chap.  ix. 


ON  PEACEFUL   GROUP   CONTACTS  313 

irresistibly  as  water  seeks  to  find  its  level.  Either  the 
weaker  race  dies  out  before  the  stronger,  or  it  is  absorbed 
by  the  stronger,  or  the  two  combine  into  something  differ- 
ent from  what  either  was  before.  The  first  case  might 
be  called  selection  by  extermination,  the  second  selection 
by  assimilation,  the  third  selection  by  the  melting  pot. 
The  first  case  we  have  covered  in  the  discussion  of  inter- 
group  selection ;  the  second  operates  where  marked  dis- 
tinctions in  culture  history  separate  the  groups,  but  where 
no  hectic  antipathy  forces  a  death-grapple.  In  such  cases 
the  ruder  people  usually  adopt  the  knowledge  and  arts 
of  their  superiors,  partly  through  necessity,  partly  through 
shame  at  the  exposure  of  their  barbarous  manners.  Mean- 
while their  own  special  culture  halts  and  probably  falls 
into  desuetude,  perhaps  to  be  revived  later  by  their  supe- 
riors as  the  inspiration  to  new  advances  in  art.  Witness 
in  our  own  times  the  revival  or  discovery  of  Swedish,  Rus- 
sian, and  Bulgarian  "peasant  art,"  the  folk-songs  of  the 
negroes  and  Indians,  the  folk-drama  {e.g.,  of  the  English 
Dramatic  Revival  Society),  and  the  festival  movement. 

From  the  biological  point  of  view  the  most  important 
phase  of  race  contacts  is  the  third  case,  race-mixture,  amal- 
gamation, the  actual  physical  and  mental  cross-breeding 
of  races.  This  whole  question  of  in-  and  out-breeding  is 
still  in  scientific  twihght.  In-breeding  used  to  be  thought 
inevitably  degenerative  to  any  population.  But  recent 
studies  cast  doubt  on  that  popular  belief.  Fischer,  from 
experiences  with  the  "Bastards"  of  German  Southwest 
Africa,  concludes  that  "if  a  healthy  and  normal  and  not 
too  small  population  inbreeds  and  lives  for  several  genera- 
tions, no  harm  is  done."  ^     On  the  other  hand,  the  bugaboo 

'  E.  Fischer,  "Zum  Inzuchts-  unci  Bastardierungsproblem  beim 
Menschen,"  Korr.  Bl.  d.  Dcutsch.  GeseUcsch.  f.  Anthr.  zii  Hamburg,  xlii, 
105-8;  Id.,  Die  Rehobother  Bastards  und  das  Bastardierungsproblem  bcim 
Menschen,  Jena,  19 13. 


314  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

of  corrupting  the  blood  of  a  pure  race  by  foreign  admixtures 
no  longer  terrifies  as  it  formerly  did.  To  be  sure  voices 
of  alarm  still  rise.  Professor  H.  B.  Ward  urges  the  fact 
that  most  of  the  products  of  cross-breeding  in  plants  and 
animals  are  trash,  therefore  that  human  crosses  may  not 
be  more  successful.^ 

Yet  it  is  perfectly  plain  that  such  a  conclusion  takes 
for  granted  the  existence  of  pure  strains,  pure  races  —  an 
absurd  presupposition.  A  pure  race  is  the  Holy  Grail  of 
physical  anthropologists.  We  are  all  mongrels.  America 
is  no  more  mongrel  and  no  more  in  danger  of  becoming 
so  than,  say,  Italy,  Spain,  England,  France,  or  any  other 
modern  people.  Successive  inundations  of  invaders  have 
"corrupted"  their  blood  and  modified  their  population 
types ;  and  the  process  still  goes  on,  less  noisily  perhaps, 
but  no  less  surely.  Instead  of  being  afraid  of  such  mixtures, 
we  should  seek  them,  having  granted  ahens  the  right  to 
move  about  freely  and  to  take  up  residence  among  us. 
The  real  danger  is  that  amalgamation  may  not  take  place, 
and  that  we  may  be  faced  in  the  near  future  with  'pools' 
of  immigrants,  or  distinct  resistant  nodules  of  aliens  which 
defy  any  sort  of  amalgamation.  So  far  there  are  no  evi- 
dences of  degeneration  in  this  country  as  a  result  of  race- 
crossings,  unless  a  lowered  birth  rate  be  called  degeneracy.^ 
Such  anthropological  measurements  as  have  been  secured 
for  the  second  generation  of  school  children  born  of  mixed 
parentage  show  higher  weight,  chest  measurements,  etc., 
than  the  general  average  of  pure  American  stocks.  The 
third  generation  reaches  a  still  higher  average.^ 

^  Bull.  Amer.  Acad,  of  Medicine,  April,  191 2,  pp.  79-80. 

2  Jenks  in  his  "Ethnic  Census  of  Minneapolis,"  found  that  an  admixture 
of  Scandinavian  blood  tends  to  decrease  fecundity  of  other  peoples  in 
amalgamation  but  there  is  no  hint  of  degeneracy  apparent.  {Am.  Jour. 
Social.  17  :  776-782.) 

^  Cf.  Hutchinson,  Ann.  Amer.  Acad.,  34 :  43. 


ON   PEACEFUL  GROUP   CONTACTS  315 

We  cannot  go  into  all  the  intricacies  and  conflicting 
evidence  of  the  problem  of  race-crossing.  But  this  may 
be  said,  namely,  that  while  race-blending  is  not  in  every 
case  practicable  or  even  desirable,  yet  the  crossing  of  dis- 
tinct races  when  sanctioned  by  social  approval  not  only 
does  not  result  in  degeneracy  nor  extinction,  but  may  even 
produce  a  cross  of  superior  type.^  Many  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished men,  particularly  men  of  letters,  in  recent  times 
are  racial  complexes.  Poe,  Whitman,  Lowell,  Bret  Harte, 
Mark  Twain,  Longfellow,  Lafcadio  Hearn,  Edison,  in 
America ;  Tennyson,  Swinburne,  Rossetti,  Browning,  Rom- 
illy,  Lewes,  Millais,  Disraeli,  in  England ;  Sainte-Beuve, 
Dumas,  Taine,  de  Maistre,  Montalembert,  Merimee, 
Hugo,  in  France ;  Kant  in  Germany ;  Pushkin,  Lhermon- 
tofif,  von  Vizine  in  Russia ;  Ibsen  in  Norway,  — are  types  of 
such  mixtures.  Tennyson  was  a  cross  of  Danish,  French, 
and  English.  Swinburne  of  Danish  and  French.  Morris 
of  Welsh  and  Anglo-Danish.  Browning  of  West-Saxon 
British,  Creole,  and  German.  Olive  Schreiner,  of  German, 
English,  and  Jewish.  Walter  Pater  of  Flemish  and  Anglo- 
Danish.  Thomas  Hardy  of  Enghsh,  Jersey-French,  Irish. 
Flaubert  of  French  and  Iroquois.  Dumas  of  French  and 
Negro.  Hugo  of  Lorraine-German  and  Breton.  Zola 
of  Italian,  Greek,  and  French.  Ibsen  of  German,  Scotch, 
and  Norwegian.  Pushkin  of  Russian  and  Abyssinian 
Negro.  And  so  the  list  might  go  on  indefinitely. ^ 
Theoretically  this  is  just  what  we  might  expect,  for 
two  reasons :  (i)  the  mixture  increases  the  possible 
combinations  of  traits,  hence  greater,  more  complex 
adjustments  to  environment;  (2)  superior  mental  abil- 
ity   according    to    modern    genetics    is    'dominant'    in    a 

^  Cf.  the  papers  of  Professor  Earl  Finch  and  Dr.  Jean  Baptiste  de  Lacerda 
at  the  First  Universal  Races  Congress,  igii. 

2  Cf.  Finot,  Race  Prejudice,  159  fl. ;  Havelock  Ellis,  Atlantic  Mo.,  71: 
382-9. 


3l6  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

mixture ;   therefore  the  mixture  represents  a  leveling  up, 
not  down. 

The  trouble  with  the  half-breed  or  any  other  racial 
mixture  is  not  racial  but  societal,  not  physiological  but 
sociological.  The  half-breed  in  South  Africa  or  in  Aus- 
tralia or  in  our  own  Southern  States  may  fail.  But  he 
fails  not  because  he  is  by  heredity  weak  and  degenerate ; 
his  weaknesses  and  vices  come  from  his  isolation,  from  the 
contempt  and  suspicion,  the  social  disapproval  showered 
upon  him.  He  is  a  citizen  of  No  Man's  Land,  a  man  with- 
out a  country,  without  a  just  share  in  the  social  heredity 
which  falls  to  normal  persons ;  he  becomes  a  pariah,  a 
moral  and  economic  derelict. 

But  exchange  of  persons  and  blood  through  mating  is 
only  one  of  the  social  transfusions  wrought  by  race  con- 
tact. Trade  is  a  form  of  group  migration  and  contact. 
Economic  borrowings  have  been  fraught  with  tremendous 
and  sometimes  terrible  significance.  America  gave  Europe 
tobacco,  the  potato,  and  the  hammock.  Europe  inspired 
America  and  Africa  with  a  consuming  love  of  firearms, 
whisky,  cheap  cottons,  and  glass  beads.  Through  con- 
tacts and  alliances  engineered  by  Solomon,  Israel  replaced 
the  ass  by  the  horse,  flint  and  wooden  tools  by  metals, 
mud  and  stone  hovels  by  walled  cities.^ 

Borrowings  of  political  and  social  institutions  have 
been  no  less  important.  Roman  law  crossed  Italian  fron- 
tiers and  still  commands  the  attention  of  western  Europe. 
Feudalism  passed  rapidly  from  group  to  group.  Benevo- 
lent despotism  became  the  fashion  through  contact  and 
imitation  in  eighteenth  century  Europe.  Democracy  is 
still  going  the  rounds :  an  American  scholar  writes  the 
constitution  for  the  Chinese  Repubhc.  Men  needed  no 
example  to  incite  them  to  the  institution  of  slavery ;  but 
^  Kent,  History  of  the  Hebrew  People,  i,  i8o,  240;  ii,  48. 


ON  PEACEFUL  GROUP  CONTACTS  317 

the  example  of  England  did  much  to  set  the  pace  for  its 
aboHtion  by  all  civilized  nations.  The  introduction  of 
the  Juvenile  Court  into  nearly  every  European  country 
is  an  excellent  example  of  exchange  of  social  institutions. 
The  spread  of  the  worship  of  Egyptian  gods  and  of  Mithra 
in  Rome  and  the  conquests  of  Christianity  show  how  reli- 
gion may  not  figure  in  the  balance  sheet  of  dealings  between 
peoples,  yet  may  be  the  most  important  article  of  trade  and 
the  most  significant  result  of  contact.  Exchanges  in  art  are 
no  less  obvious,  though  less  important.  Greece  is  modified 
by  Egypt  and  in  turn  affects  Hindu  sculpture  and  architec- 
ture. Rome  swallows  Greek  art  almost  at  a  gulp.  Peruvian 
designs  in  pottery  and  textiles  determine  the  art  of  prehis- 
toric Central  America.  American  millionaires  build  French 
chateaux  and  Italian  immigrants  returning  to  their  old  homes 
dazzle  their  fellows  with  the  latest  gimcracks  of  American 
architecture.  Most  significant  among  language  borrowings 
was  of  course  the  importation  of  the  alphabet  by  Greece  from 
Phoenicia.  The  spread  of  French  and  English  as  world  lan- 
guages bids  fair  to  yield  an  unsuspected  fruitage  of  interna- 
tional understandings.  The  demand  for  Volapuk,  Esperanto, 
and  other  artificial  languages  indicates  that  nations  would 
be  glad  to  borrow  even  more  heavily  in  this  domain. 

Finally,  there  are  the  borrowings  of  educational  methods 
and  ideals.  The  introduction  of  Greek  methods  and  sub- 
jects into  Italy,  the  spread  of  Rousseau's  ideas  through- 
out Europe,  those  of  Pestalozzi  and  Froebel  into  America, 
those  of  Europe  and  America  into  the  Orient,  and  the 
recent  acceptance  of  the  Montessori  methods  by  many 
American  educators,  will  suffice  to  indicate  the  reach  of 
this  product  of  contact.^ 

^  See  on  the  general  subject  of  race-contacts  and  culture  borrowings, 
Ross,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  234  ff . ;  Maine,  Early  History  of  Institutions, 
176-7. 


3l8  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

It  is  not  to  be  imagined  that  all  these  borrowings  are  al- 
ways necessarily  good.  "Things"  are  not  good  in  them- 
selves. And  the  evil  effects  of  contact  between  higher  and 
lower  races  may  come  more  from  the  "good"  things  than 
from  the  avowedly  bad  or  contraband  things  brought  in 
by  higher  races :  for  example,  clothes,  canned  goods,  spec- 
tacles. Europeans  and  Americans  usually  find  it  hard 
to  believe  that  their  monogamous  form  of  marriage  may  do 
the  Africans  more  harm  than  their  rum  or  guns.  But  even 
missionaries  have  sometimes  found  it  so.  Much  of  Bishop 
Colenso's  trouble  with  his  generation  grew  out  of  the  at- 
tempt to  convince  them  of  this  truth.  The  Gilbert  Is- 
landers are  said  to  be  dying  out  by  consumption  as  the 
result  of  wearing  European  clothes.  The  attempt  to  throw 
off  an  ancient  tribal  culture  and  to  graft  on  a  new  religion, 
unless  preceded  by  fundamental  changes  in  industrial 
organization  and  by  economic  discipline,  may  easily  result 
in  a  chronic  state  of  pessimism  or  dependence  which  is 
inimical  to  healthy  life. 

The  secret  of  successful  peaceable  cross-fertihzation  of 
cultures  (that  is,  successful  in  terms  of  real  progress)  is 
that  the  process  be  allowed  to  go  on  naturally  and  slowly. 
Rapid  acculturations  are  always  superficial  and  temporary. 
The  white  man's  burden  must  be  judiciously  handled. 
As  well  try  to  turn  out  a  world  of  straight-nosed  people 
in  a  single  generation  as  to  missionary  or  commercialize 
West  Africans  forthwith  into  Englishmen  with  bath-tubs 
and  an  inexhaustible  interest  in  the  Budget.  It  has  been 
urged,  however,  that  the  natural  order  of  development 
would  be  more  closely  followed  if  we  sent  industrial  instead 
of  religious  missions,  say,  to  India  or  Africa.  Primitive 
men  must  not  be  cultured  out  of  existence.  Their  guard- 
ians must  not  force  or  hurry  them  along  some  rigidly  pre- 
conceived line  of  development.     Their  own  culture  history 


ON  PEACEFUL   GROUP   CONTACTS  319 

must  be  tolerated  and  accepted.  Indeed,  "the  absolute 
need  of  tolerance  would  seem  to  be  the  only  general  prin- 
ciple which  could  be  laid  down  regarding  the  contact  with 
natives."  ^  Nansen's  polar  experiences  led  him  to  con- 
clude that  the  only  rapid  change  which  can  be  wrought 
in  a  primitive  race  is  change  toward  degeneration  and 
ruin.  Every  human  group  must  to  a  very  considerable 
degree  be  left  to  work  out  its  own  salvation  in  fear  and 
trembling,  along  the  lines  already  traced  out  by  its  culture 
history.  There  are  short  cuts,  however ;  and  just  as  edu- 
cation and  other  social  institutions  serve  to  abridge  racial 
experience  for  the  child,  so  the  higher  races  with  a 
more  fortunate  experience  may  serve  the  lower  at 
least  to  the  extent  of  aiding  them  in  avoiding  many 
pitfalls  and  blind  alleys.  But  just  as  no  teacher  or 
parent  can  make  his  own  experience  en  bloc  that  of 
the  child,  neither  can  a  humble  race  swallow  whole  a 
tabloid  culture  even  though,  like  Alice's  cake,  most 
alluringly  labeled. 

Whether  we  like  it  or  not  every  nation  is  every  other 
nation's  keeper.  There  can  be  no  longer  any  hermit  na- 
tions. The  processes  of  acculturation  had  (even  before 
August,  1 9 14)  taken  on  world  dimensions.  These  processes 
can  be  made  supremely  available  for  real  lasting  progress 
only  if  the  motives  for  culture  borrowings  and  exchanges 
are  worthy  and  the  end  to  be  attained  is  the  full  brother- 
hood of  men  at  the  flood  tidal  mark  of  civilization.  These 
motives  and  ends  do  not  rise  spontaneously  but  are  the 
product  of  definite  inculcation.  Neither  is  tolerance, 
which  in  all  ages  has  eased  up  the  strain  of  racial  contacts, 
a  spontaneous  phenomenon ;  it  is  a  highly  conscious  and 
rational   attitude   manifested   by   disciphned   intelligence. 

^  A.  G.  Keller,  "A  Sociological  View  of  the  Native  Question,"  Vale 
Review,  3 :  264. 


320  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

In  short,  to  be  effective,  group  contacts  must  accord  with 
a  definite  policy  of  world  education. 

Until  the  outbreak  of  the  Great  War  several  most  prom- 
ising signs  heralded  an  approaching  internationalism  and 
growing   international   osmosis ;    perhaps   even   yet   they 
are  not  irretrievably  lost.     Among  these  might  be  noted 
the   never-ceasing    stream    of    foreign    travel.     Even    the 
much-maligned  tourist  is  not  to  be  overlooked  as  a  culture 
bearer ;  in  spite  of  his  apparent  arrogance  and  impermeabil- 
ity he  is  bound  to  carry  back  some  grains  of  fertilizing 
pollen.     The   international   exchange   of   scholars   and   of 
students   is  even  more  promising.     Movements   like   the 
Cosmopolitan  Clubs  and  the  International  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
smooth   away  many  prejudices   between   race   and   race. 
International  conferences  are  becoming  a  laudable  habit 
and  must  be  encouraged.     To  be  sure  our  own  government 
has  heretofore  pursued  a  most  niggardly  policy  with  re- 
gard to  these  conferences ;   not  long  ago  the  United  States 
Bureau  of  Education  had  to  beg  money  from  private  sources 
wherewith  to  send  a  representative  to  a  world-meeting  of 
educators  in  Europe.     The  United  States  should  be  repre- 
sented  and   adequately   represented   at   every   important 
international    conference,    and    every   department   of    the 
national  government  should  have  a  contingent  fund  for 
this   purpose.     Perhaps   no    other   single   measure   would 
do  so  much  to  elevate  us  above  the  mere  parochial  point 
of  view,  and  it  might  incidentally  aid  in  breaking  down 
the  habitual  "pork  barrel"  type  of  financial  legislation. 
The    demands    for    international    arbitration    machinery 
and  a  world  language,  although  they  may  not  attain  their 
end    in    the   precise   form    demanded,    are    indicative   of 
a  desire    to   get    together.     Whether   they   result   in    the 
Parliament    of    Man    or    not,    they    cannot    avoid    the 
sharing  of  culture. 


ON   TEACEFUL   GROUP   CONTACTS  32 I 

We  should  not  overlook  the  fact  that  some  foreign  mis- 
sionaries have  grasped  their  opportunities  for  the  exchange 
of  the  best  in  race  cultures  and  have  perhaps  brought 
back  more  by  way  of  toleration  and  understanding  than 
they  took  to  the  heathen  by  way  of  a  "gospel"  or  set  of 
mores.  Special  training  in  anthropology  would  increase 
still  further  their  service  as  culture-agents.  This  leads  to 
the  observation  that  on  behalf  of  certain  less  favored  groups 
of  men  the  sympathetic  and  systematic  study  of  "back- 
ward races"  is  to  be  commended.  Such  studies  (to  choose 
only  at  random)  as  Dudley  Kidd's  Savage  Childhood  and 
The  Essential  Kaffir,  Johnson's  Lion  and  Dragon  in  Northern 
China,  Mary  Kingsley's  West  African  Studies,  Junod's 
Life  of  a  South  African  Tribe,  or  Madame  Pommerol's 
Une  Femme  chez  les  Sahariennes  cannot  fail  to  awaken  a 
lively  feeling  of  the  essential  unity  of  mankind.  The 
new  imperialism  is  also  learning  that  to  foster  co-education 
of  subject  races  means  huge  gains  in  peace,  patience,  and 
cooperation.  The  experience  of  Britain  in  Egypt,  and 
the  teachings  of  Aga  Khan  and  Tagore  in  India  suggest 
that  the  static  Orient  may  be  rehabilitated  otherwise  than 
by  rude  subjection  to  militarism  or  an  exploiting  bureau- 
cracy. 


INSTITUTIONAL  INTERPRETATIONS 


CHAPTER   XXI 

PROPERTY 

Man  is  essentially  an  institution  builder.  What  we 
call  human  society  is  simply  a  web  of  ideas  and  sentiments 
spun  out  of  the  common  life,  a  fabric  of  social  habits  which 
has  grown  up  in  the  attempt  to  adjust  to  and  control  life 
conditions.  It  is  a  shifting  expression  of  the  will-to-live. 
Some  of  these  ideas  and  sentiments  we  have  learned  to  call 
folkways,  mores,  customs,  conventions,  rights,  and  the 
like.  Many  of  them  appear  in  a  somewhat  more  solid, 
coherent,  and  rational  form,  as  precipitated  modes  of  social 
procedure  or  definitely  organized  structures  for  regulating 
the  intercourse  between  members  of  a  social  group.  A 
more  or  less  persistent  and  challenging  problem  or  need 
calls  forth  the  institution  for  meeting  it.  Institutions,  in 
turn,  become  "the  molds  in  which  the  continued  life  of 
society  is  cast.  Now,  while  there  is  no  institution  as  such, 
all  institutions  being  of  some  specific  type  —  economic, 
political,  domestic,  juridical  —  and  while,  consequently, 
there  is  no  institution  without  ideas,  nor  any  change  in 
institutions  without  a  corresponding  and  preliminary 
change  in  ideas,  yet  the  mere  fact  of  their  codification  of 
an  approved  way  of  solving  a  persistent  problem  implies 
a  considerable  fixity  of  form  and  therefore  a  certain  per- 
manence. This  permanence  gives  a  basis  of  continuity 
to  the  social  process.  Hence  if  the  process  is  a  progressive 
movement  it  ought  to  be  reflected  in  the  history  of  social 

32s 


326  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

institutions,  and  conversely  they  should  have  some  definite 
bearing  on  the  record  of  progress.  It  would  be  impossible 
to  trace  out  in  detail  the  significance  for  human  progress 
of  the  enormous  range  of  institutions.  Herbert  Spencer 
touched  only  a  few  of  them,  but  it  required  three  fat  vol- 
umes. Therefore,  we  are  reduced  to  the  expedient  of  pick- 
ing out  a  few  typical  institutions  for  cursory  treatment. 
These  may  include  property,  the  family,  government, 
classes  and  castes,  religion,  law,  public  opinion,  and,  with 
certain  reservations  noted  in  Chapter  VIII,  language. 
The  institution  of  property  will  serve  as  a  point  of 
departure. 

Real  property  was  held  in  common  by  primitive  groups. 
Personal  property  was  confined  usually  to  ornaments  and 
trinkets.  Only  with  the  domestication  of  animals,  the 
development  of  agriculture,  the  advance  of  industrial 
technique,  trade  relations  with  other  groups,  and  the  stor- 
ing up  of  capital,  does  the  concept  of  property  take  firm 
hold  on  human  thought  and  get  itself  erected  into  a  sacred 
institution.  With  the  growing  concept  of  property  grew 
also  an  aversion  to  communism  and  an  emphasis  upon 
individual  effort.  It  is  beyond  question  that  on  the  whole 
primitive  communism  was  a  hindrance  to  progress.  It 
fostered  imprudence,  parasitism,  and  dependence.  It 
discounted  those  variations  in  individual  ability  which 
further  discovery  and  invention.  The  competition  let 
loose  by  personalizing  property  aided  the  more  rapid  ac- 
cumulation of  social  wealth.  Gradually  the  idea  of  the 
sacredness  of  property  overcomes  the  old  habits  of  improv- 
idence and  destructiveness. 

The  systems  by  which  property  is  held  depend  on  the 
mode  of  production.  Hence  there  is  no  necessary  dis- 
crepancy between  the  idea  of  property  as  a  good  and  the 
idea  of  some  particular  method  of  property-holding  as  bad. 


PROPERTY  327 

And  one  is  by  no  means  inconsistent  if  he  holds  property 
to  be  sacred  and  indispensable  to  human  development, 
but  considers  private  ownership  of  land  or  other  basic 
utilities  not  only  far  from  sacred  but  absolutely  inimical 
to  progress.  Private  ownership  is  only  one  element  in 
an  economic  process  which  aims  at  group  welfare.  Primor- 
dial forms  of  communism  limited  that  welfare.  It  would 
appear  that  the  exaggeration  of  the  impulse  for  private 
ownership  mihtates  no  less  against  future  advance.  I 
should  not  put  it  so  crudely  as  to  say  we  are  throttled  by 
a  scheming  "money-power."  But  I  should  say  that  we 
are  the  victims  of  a  scheme  of  property  ownership  that 
emphasizes  production  for  private  gain  instead  of  for 
public  welfare,  a  system  of  exploitation  instead  of  serv- 
ice. 

For  this  reason  the  nimble  wit  of  Mr.  W.  H.  Mallock  and 
the  stately  eloquence  of  Mr.  Paul  Elmer  More,  when  put 
to  the  service  of  maintaining  the  present  status  quo  in  so 
far  as  private  ownership  of  property  is  concerned,  fail  to 
strike  in  us  any  sympathetic  response.  They  are  some- 
what too  certain  of  their  apostleship  to  redeem  them  from 
the  suspicion  that  their  diatribes  against  the  radicals  who 
question  the  current  property  system  are  not  altogether 
free  from  special  pleading.  Mr.  Mallock's  thesis  reduces 
in  short  to  this :  progress  depends  upon  a  struggle  through 
which  the  fittest  great  men  shall  secure  influence  over 
others,  a  struggle,  that  is,  not  for  mere  subsistence,  but 
for  domination,  power,  social  inequality ;  but  the  great 
men  who  struggle  for  that  domination  or  social  inequahty 
which  is  so  essential  would  not  do  so  without  some  strong 
motive :  that  strong  motive  is  none  other  than  wealth. 
He  frankly  urges  that  this  concentration  of  property  in  the 
hands  of  his  great  men  must  always  rest  upon  exploitation 
of  the  masses  through  slavery  or  its  mitigation,  a  wage 


328  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

system.^  "The  industrial  obedience  of  the  many  to  the 
few,"  he  declares,  "is  the  fundamental  condition  of  prog- 
ress." Any  change  in  the  direction  of  modifying  the 
present  system  of  distributing  property,  however  defective 
it  may  appear,  must  cause  civilization  and  progress  to 
mark  time.  Maintain  social  inequahty,  that  is,  the  rewards 
to  genius,  and  you  maintain  civilization.  As  this  question 
of  property  is  so  closely  bound  up  with  the  problem  of 
classes  we  may  appropriately  defer  criticism  of  Mr.  Mal- 
lock's  positions  until  they  are  more  fully  exposed  in  a  later 
chapter. 

Meanwhile  any  one  whose  eyes  are  not  utterly  sealed 
must  see  that  this  writer  has  rehearsed  the  wearisome  old 
fallacy  which  confuses  the  sacredness  of  property  with 
the  sanctity  of  some  particular  scheme  of  ownership  and 
distribution.  Mr.  More,  in  his  discussions  of  those  wicked 
un-Latined  radicals  who  meditate  and  even  commit  "raids 
on  prosperity,"  repeats  this  classic  fallacy.  He  scolds 
large  property  holders  like  Mr.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  for  being 
"a  little  troubled  to  know  whether  their  instinctive  feel- 
ings as  property  owners  are  hot  in  some  way  unethical."  ^ 
For  shame,  says  Mr.  More.  God  or  Law  has  decreed 
"initial  inequahty  of  men  .  .  .  which  makes  one  vessel 
for  dishonour  and  another  for  honour."  Property  magni- 
fies this  natural  injustice,  this  fatal  necessity.  The  attempt 
to  ignore  or  undo  this  property  inequality  would  stop  prog- 
ress and  throw  the  world  back  into  temporary  barbarism. 
For  to  the  civilized  man  "the  rights  of  property  are  more 
important  than  the  right  to  life."  ^  But  why  limit  this 
judgment  to  the  civilized?  Property  rights  are  not  only 
more  important  than  the  right  to  life,  but  they  are  life 
to  the  Fuegian,  to    the   Veddah ;    they  were   life    to  the 

*  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  143-74;   Social  Equality,  chaps,  vi-x. 
^  Aristocracy  and  Justice,  129.  ^Ibid.,  135-6. 


PROPERTY  329 

Neanderthal  man,  to  the  Pithecanthropos,  to  the  anthro- 
poid ape,  to  the  amoeba  itself;  they  are  life  to  the  iron 
molder,  the  coal  miner,  and  the  cloak  and  suit  maker,  no 
less  than  to  Mr.  More's  patrons  of  liberal  culture  and  club 
intimates.  No  one  would  quarrel  with  him  for  a  moment 
on  that  proposition  if  he  widen  it  sufficiently.  The  issue 
discloses  itself,  however,  the  instant  the  question  is  prop- 
erly put,  namely,  What  is  the  effect  upon  social  progress 
when  A's  property  rights  conflict  with  B's  right  to  life? 
And  if  the  critic  has  plenty  of  time  and  is  patient  with 
fatuity  he  might  raise  a  weary  hand  to  protest  against 
another  fallacious  stating  of  the  property  issue.  Men 
may  abuse  property  rights,  says  Mr.  More,  but  "it  is  better 
that  legal  robbery  should  exist  along  with  maintenance 
of  law,  than  that  legal  robbery  should  be  suppressed  at 
the  expense  of  law."  ^  Only  a  mind  preoccupied  and 
somewhat  befuddled  by  its  own  apologetics  could  have 
closed  his  case  with  these  two  alternatives.  Neither  theo- 
retically nor  in  practice  is  it  necessary  to  tolerate  robbery 
to  support  law,  nor  is  the  fabric  of  law  so  inflexible  as  to 
hinder  the  suppression  of  robbery,  given  a  Uttle  common 
sense,  vision,  and  patience. 

Since  institutions  are  not  written  into  the  nature  of 
things  but  are  spun  out  of  the  human  heart,  it  is  evident 
that,  once  convinced  that  the  institution  of  property  as 
it  is  now  formulated  hinders  rational  progress,  the  public 
mind  will  remold  it  to  serve  its  own  highest  interests. 
This  would  mean  a  redistribution  of  ownership  in  the 
direction  of  a  greater  and  more  explicit  socialization  of 
property.  The  enormous  growth  of  socialism,  the  demand 
for  conservation  of  national  resources,  the  mounting,  in- 
deed irresistible  and  practically  world-wide  sentiment  in 
favor  of  public   ownership   of  public   utilities   and  basic 

^  Ibid.,  141. 


330  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

industries  witness  to  this  changing  concept  of  property; 
and  the  present  war  threatens  to  accelerate  this  revolution. 
This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  the  abolition  of  private 
property  is  imminent  or  even  remotely  probable ;  still 
less  that  it  would  be  desirable.  A  reversion  to  anything 
savoring  of  absolute  communism  is  to  the  present-day 
mind  almost  unthinkable^.  Private  ownership  is  still  a 
spur  to  creative  effort,  beneficial  alike  to  individual  and 
group.  From  the  standpoint  of  social  advance  the  govern- 
ing principle  must  be  such  a  distribution  of  ownership  as 
will  evoke  and  develop  prudence,  self-control,  and  a  sense 
of  responsibility,  will  release  the  springs  of  energy  and 
productive  effort,  and  reward  equitably  real  contributions 
to  social  well-being.  The  function  of  property  as  an  agency 
for  progress  might  be  stated  as  a  paraphrase  of  Grover 
Cleveland's  aphorism,  ''A  public  office  is  a  public  trust," 
thus :  the  institution  of  property  is  a  progressive  force 
so  long  as  it  is  conceived  as  a  means  in  terms  of  public 
welfare ;  it  is  a  menace  and  a  hindrance  when  conceived 
as  an  end  in  terms  of  private  advantage,  special  privilege 
and  exploitation. 

"A  mere  property  career  is  not  the  final  destiny  of  man- 
kind if  progress  is  to  be  the  law  of  the  future  as  it  has  been 
of  the  past."  ^  So  long,  however,  as  65  per  cent,  of  the 
people  of  such  an  enormously  wealthy  country  as  the 
United  States  are  practically  denuded  of  property  save  a 
few  personal  effects  and  the  shabby  clothes  on  their  backs, 
and  so  long  as  two  per  cent,  of  the  people  continue  to  own 
or  control  three  fifths  of  the  total  available  property,  and 
so  long  as  this  disproportionate  concentration  may  be- 
come aggravated  rather  than  lessened ;  so  long,  in  other 
words,  as  the  vast  majority  of  a  people  are  cut  off  from  the 
cultural  and  disciplinary  effects  of  ownership,  but  little 
^  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  Part  IV,  chap.  ii. 


PROPERTY  331 

substantial  improvement  can  be  hoped  for.  Before  the 
present  period  of  preoccupation  with  wealth  can  be  trav- 
ersed and  a  career  of  something  higher  than  mere  pro- 
duction for  production's  sake  begun,  a  tremendous  conflict 
over  ownership  must  be  waged  ;  whether  this  conflict  shall 
be  long,  relatively  peaceful,  and  proceed  by  a  series  of  com- 
promises, or  be  shorter  and  more  cataclysmic,  we  have 
no  present  means  of  knowing.  But  the  conflict  is  inevi- 
table if  the  fullest  latent  energies  of  property  are  to  be 
tapped  and  made  available  for  human  betterment.  In- 
deed, the  conflict  is  now  on,  despite  the  cultivated  gentle- 
men who  cry,  Woe,  woe !  and  turn  back  their  saddened 
eyes  to  the  glory  that  was  Greece  and  the  grandeur  that 
was  Rome. 


CHAPTER   XXII 
THE  FAMILY 

Opinion  on  the  relation  between  the  family  institution 
and  social  progress  runs  clear  through  the  spectrum,  from 
the  deepest  indigo  of  those  who  see  in  the  family  a  sacro- 
sanct divine  institution/ the  chief  pillar  of  order,  religion, 
and  the  state,  the  fountain  of  every  virtue,  pubhc  no  less 
than  private,  to  the  violent  red  of  those  who  find  it  the 
adamantine  rock  which  bars  the  path  to  race  perfection, 
to  a  higher  morahty,  a  nobler  concept  of  property,  a  more 
fully  developed  state,  a  finer  sense  of  civic  responsibility, 
which  stifles  and  freezes  the  fine  emotion  of  love  and  debases 
it  to  the  grossest  ends.  The  scientific  attitude  finds  itself 
somewhere  about  the  middle  of  this  color  scale. 

While  discarding  the  idea  that  human  society  as  we  know 
it  has  developed  out  of  some  prehistoric  family  as  the  single 
germ  or  cell,  or  that  it  is  now  the  fundamental  social  unit, 
the  claims  of  the  family  for  services  rendered  in  the  past 
to  social  development  are  not  thereby  disallowed.  From 
a  biological  standpoint  it  has  been  and  still  is  indispensable 
as  the  conserver  of  child  life  :  it  is  in  no  mere  metaphorical 
sense  a  sort  of  extended  placenta.  Through  assuring  to 
the  child  a  longer  period  of  infancy  it  permitted  the  little 
one  to  absorb  its  social  inheritance  and  to  elaborate  its 
mental  outfit,  while  at  the  same  time  it  enforced  a  valuable 
social  discipline  upon  its  parents.  Incidentally  it  saved  the 
time  and  strength  of  parents  by  cutting  down  a  wasteful 
birth  rate  and  by  postponing  the  period  of  sexual  maturity. 

332 


THE  FAMILY  333 

As  an  economic  device  it  was  no  less  significant  in  the 
specialization  of  occupations,  in  the  history  of  agriculture, 
trade,  and  the  manufacturing  arts,  in  stabilizing  the  insti- 
tution of  private  property,  in  developing  the  arts  of  con- 
sumption and  saving.  As  a  cultural  device  its  chief  sig- 
nificance grows  out  of  the  fund  of  leisure  created  by  a  les- 
sened birth  rate,  and  out  of  its  share  in  the  intellectual 
elaboration  of  youth.  Its  political  services  have  been  on 
the  whole  negative  and  conservative,  if  not  quite  negligible  : 
there  is  no  sound  evidence  to  show  that  the  family  ever  was  h 
the  parent  of  the  state.  While  it  cannot  be  revered  as 
the  mother  of  all  the  virtues,  its  contribution  to  ethical 
development  has  been  large :  the  virtues  of  sympathy, 
patience,  tenderness,  self-sacrifice,  obedience,  foresight,  and 
courage,  to  name  only  a  few,  strike  their  roots  deep  down 
into  the  homely  strata  of  domestic  life.  As  I  have  else- 
where been  at  considerable  pains  to  show,  the  family  has 
not  been  in  all  ages  par  excellence  the  supreme  and  basic 
educational  institution  ;  but  it  has  always  been  an  extremely 
important  element  in  the  educational  machinery  of  a  normal 
social  group. 

The  family  has  served  in  all  these  directions ;  but 
it  has  hindered  in  others.  Largely,  it  appears,  because  of 
a  certain  inherent  passivity  and  conservatism.  In  all  ages 
it  has  tended  to  take  on  the  form  and  content  imposed 
by  the  general  living  conditions  to  which  human  groups 
have  been  subjected.  At  the  same  time  domestic  insti- 
tutions lean  backwards  and  tend  to  perpetuate  archaic 
forms  and  relations  long  after  the  original  conditions  which 
evoked  them  have  been  supplanted. 

The  mother-clan  family  may  be  cited  to  illustrate  how 
domestic  forms  can  hinder  social  development.  Under 
such  a  clan  system  communism  with  all  its  limitations  pre- 
vailed.    Domestic  solidarity  itself  was  impossible.     Chil- 


334  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

dren  belonged  to  the  maternal  clan ;  consequently  were 
pitted  against  their  father  in  case  of  strife  between  his 
clan  and  his  wife's.  The  transition  to  the  father-clan  illus- 
trates on  the  other  hand  not  only  how  a  type  of  domestic 
organization  may  insure  greater  social  strength,  but  also 
how  domestic  institutions  depend  upon  other  social  con- 
tingencies. The  father-family  is  the  result  of  the  growing 
concept  of  private  property,  sedentary  life,  domestication 
of  animals,  discovery  of  metal-working,  and  a  more  precise 
knowledge  of  the  procreative  processes,  hence  a  refinement 
in  the  ideas  of  kinship  and  inheritance.  While  on  the  whole 
the  father-family  has  been  a  distinct  gain  to  the  race,  in 
certain  forms  it  also  threatened  to  hinder  our  advance. 
The  patriarchate,  with  its  insistence  upon  centralized  and 
despotic  control  of  the  property,  religion,  education,  and 
lives  of  every  member  of  the  family  group,  checked  individ- 
uality, bred  a  sort  of  self-sufficiency  and  intolerance  in  edu- 
cation and  religion,  hindered  the  growth  of  varied  arts, 
and  prepared  the  necks  of  men  for  the  yoke  of  Oriental 
despotism  and  the  theocratic  state.  An  aristocracy  of 
birth  with  its  strong  sense  of  family  ties  and  prestige 
usually  retains  many  of  these  characteristics.  The 
perception  of  this  fact  led  the  Head  Master  of  a 
great  English  school  to  declare,  "The  chief  manufac- 
tories of  caste,  so  far  as  I  can  gather,  would  seem 
not  to  be  the  public  schools  with  which  I  am  acquainted 
(where  indeed  we  have  in  existence  the  chief  forces  which 
make  against  this)  but  rather  the  homes  from  which 
pupils  come  to  us." 

The  family  in  all  ages,  then,  has  been  a  rather  passive 

land  conservative  institution,  and  has  served  the  cause  of 

Iprogress  both  positively  and  negatively  in  a  way  by  that 

Very  staticism.     Fortunately,  however,  it  is  not  dead  in 

its  conservatism,  but  is  on  the  whole  a  highly  flexible  insti- 


THE   FAMILY  335 

tution.  In  the  present  era  of  transition  and  destructive 
criticism  the  family  has  lost  much  of  its  ancient  authority. 
What  it  will  prove  to  be  in  the  future  as  a  progressive 
force,  it  is  impossible  therefore  to  predict.  The  steady 
preem])tion  by  the  state  of  the  fields  of  education  and  child 
welfare  means  a  corresponding  shrinkage  in  the  parental 
domain.  The  state  as  Over-Parent  may  still  further 
'interfere'  with  the  traditional  relationships  between 
parent  and  child.  It  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  establish 
certain  restrictions  upon  marriage,  or  otherwise  step  be- 
tween men  and  women  in  their  sexual  relationship.  But 
the  family  cannot  be  broken  up.  It  must  1)c  accepted 
for  better  or  for  worse.  So  long,  however,  as  it  is  regarded 
primarily  as  a  device  for  extinguishing  lust  or  satisfying 
it  cheaply ;  so  long  as  children  are  born  largely  as  the  un- 
calculated  aftermath  of  passion  or  in  response  to  artful 
social  suggestion ;  and  so  long  as  home  life  is  the  sphere  of  | 
unhmited  monarchy,  of  despotism,  physical,  mental,  and 
spiritual ;  so  long  but  little  can  be  expected  of  the  family 
by  way  of  serious  contributions  to  social  advance.  If  we 
want  to  utilize  the  inherent  power  for  social  discipline,  for 
affection,  for  altruism,  which  resides  in  the  family  insti- 
tution, we  must  see  to  it  that  conditions  are  maintained  in 
which  decent,  rational  home  life  can  thrive.  This  means,  _r.- 
in  the  concrete,  adequate  family  income,  education  for  ^^ 
domestic  life,  real  equality  between  parents,  a  decent  house 
(domestic  morahty  is  said  to  be  a  matter  of  square  feet),  and 
leisure  to  devote  to  the  business  of  home  Hfe  and  parenthood  : 
all  of  which  means,  in  turn,  shortening  of  the  working  day, 
education  for  leisure,  and  the  application  of  scientific  man- 
agement to  home  keeping.  The  family  will  serve  progressive 
ends,  then,  if  it  is  not  called  upon  to  do  things  for  which 
it  is  inherently  unfitted,  and  if  it  is  given  means  and  con- 
ditions appropriate  to  its  highest  functioning. 


CHAPTER  XXIIl 
GOVERNMENT 

It  is  frequently  asserted  that  religion,  classes,  economic 
organization,  education,  and  other  dynamic  social  agencies 
depend  upon  political  forms.  Or,  in  other  words,  that 
education,  law,  philosophy,  economics,  and  ethics  are  only 
the  formulation  of  current  needs  and  tendencies  of  the 
ruling  classes  in  terms  of  social  structure.  This  is  obvious 
enough  and  true  enough  when  you  stop  to  consider  that 
only  those  individuals  and  social  classes  ha\ang  a  clear 
vision  of  their  common  interests  are  sufficiently  coherent 
and  organized  to  impose  their  will  upon  their  fellows  who 
are  more  foggy-minded  and  less  closely  knit.  From  the 
standpoint  of  social  structure  ruHng  classes  are  distinctly 
superior  to  unorganized  masses ;  hence  genetically  and 
functionally  should  be  expected  to  leave  their  stamp  upon 
the  whole  fabric  of  social  life.  But  this  is  far  from  saying 
that  ruling  classes  express  their  will  only  through  political 
forms;  i.e.,  government;  or  that  government  is  merely 
a  synonym  for  ruling  classes.  One  need  not  bolt  entire 
the  Prussian  concept  of  the  state  to  lay  hold  of  the  idea 
that  government  is  wider  than  any  class,  that  in  fact  it 
is  all  of  these  in  the  complementary  attitude  of  agent  and 
isubject.  We  need  only  recall  that  society  is  a  ceaseless 
(Struggle  between  invention  and  convention,  in  which  every 
human  individual  is  both  participant  and  spectator,  in 
order  to  grasp  that  political  sovereignty  or  control  is  in- 
alienably vested  in  all  the  normal  free  members  of  the 
social  group.  Only  by  fiction,  or  inertia,  or  expediency 
can  it  be  conceived  as  lodged  elsewhere.     Hence  from  the 

336 


GOVERNMENT  337 

standpoint  of  governmental  contributions  to  social  prog- 
ress the  problem  is  perhaps  less  the  shiftings  in  the  inci- 
dence of  political  power  and  more  the  methods  and  achieve- 
ments of  political  organization. 

If  we  conceive  society  as  an  organization  of  various 


groups  based  upon  interests,  that  is,  of  a  working,  ordered^    ^,r^ 


competition   between   interest-groups,    it   is   evident   tha 
some  force  must  have  arisen  to  secure  working  harmony, 
"antagonistic   cooperation,"    compromise,   on   the   largest 
scale.     This  force  is  the  state  or,  more  exactly,  government. 
Government,   said  Huxley  and  Professor  Pollock,  is  the 
corporate  reason  of  the  community.     And  Burke,  a  cen- 
tury before,  had  declared  the  state  to  be  "not  a  partner- 
ship in  things  subservient  only  to  the  gross  animal  existence 
of  a  temporary  and  perishable  nature,"  but  "a  partnership 
in  all  science;    a  partnership  in  all  art;    a  partnership  in 
every  virtue,  and  in  all  perfection."  ^     But  if  we  hold,  and 
this  seems  nearer  the  truth  the  farther  back  we  go,   that 
men  feel,   experiment  crudely,   and   conform   rather   than 
reason,  government  appears   as   that  phase  of  the  mores 
which  secures  protection  and  enforces    inner    conformity. 
It  has  developed  in  the  direction  of  reason.     It  has  broad- 
ened in  scope  and  function  until  it  may  be  conceived,  some- 
what oratorically  to  be  sure,  as  approaching  Burke's  concept. 
While  the  state  is  now  the  most  powerful  and  coherent 
of  all  the  social  precipitates  which  we  call  social  institu- 
tions, early  societies  seem  to  have  had  no  specialized  politi- 
cal, that  is,  governmental  agencies.     An  analogy  will  bring 
out  the  significance  of  this  fact.     High  development  in 
the  animal  scale  is  not  reached  until  the  secretion  or  pre- 
cipitation of  the  shell  or  bony  skeleton  is  accomplished ; 
the  purpose  of  this  shell  or  skeleton  is  inner  coherence, 
strength,  and  protection.     Now  the  state  may  be  consid- 

^  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France,  p.  143. 
z 


338  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ered  as  such  a  skeleton.  Three  fundamental  needs  have 
always  existed  in  human  societies :  protection  from  with- 
out, order  within  (both  negative) ;  group  welfare  (positive). 
These  needs  were  met  in  some  way  or  other  even  before 
speciahzed  political  organizations  were  developed.  That 
is,  they  were  accomplished  through  government  by  reflex 
or  direct  action,  or  by  the  prestige  of  salient  personalities,  by 
custom,  and  by  taboo.  But  once  set  going,  the  state  through 
organized  government  has  tended  to  care  for  these  needs,  and 
might  be  characterized  on  the  whole  as  a  crescendo  in  power, 
definiteness  of  function,  and  efficiency.  Fundamentally, 
then,  the  state  is  an  insurance  institution,  insuring  life,  liberty, 
pursuit  of  happiness,  peace,  and  domestic  tranquillity. 

The  very  statement  of  these  historic  functions  of  gov- 
ernment gives  some  hint  by  anticipation  of  at  least  one 
way  in  which  government  has  served  human  progress. 
We  admit  that  a  certain  amount  of  domestic  peace  and 
order  are  marks  of  a  high  level  of  culture.  We  may  as  well 
admit  also  that  domestic  peace  and  good  order  are  in  a 
certain  measure  the  result,  not  the  cause,  of  stable  govern- 
ment. Selden  in  his  Table  Talk  said,, "A  King  is  a  thing 
Men  have  made  for  their  own  sakes,  for  quietness'  sake." 
The  sociologist  being  a  realist  recognizes  that  domestic 
peace  has  been  brought  to  pass  not  by  supernatural  doses 
of  reasonableness  and  love  but  by  the  creation  of  courts 
and  parliaments  whose  decrees  alone  could  put  an  end  to 
intolerable  anarchy  and  blood  feuds.  Stern  necessity 
and  not  gestures  of  friendliness  enacted  such  self-denying 
ordinances.  But  out  of  order  has  been  bred  the  orderly 
disposition  just  as  peace  breeds  pacifists.^ 

1  See  E.  A.  Ross,  Publications  of  Amcr.  Sociol.  Society,  x  :  ii.   Cf.  Carver,.|^ 
Essays  in  Social  Justice,  108-9  '•   "Government  and  government  alone  pre-' 
vents  competition  from  lapsing  into  the  brutal  struggle  for  existence.  .  .  ." 
etc.     By  contrast,  Balfour's  view  is,  to  say  the  least,  tepid.     See  A  Fragment 
on  Progress,  259-62,  277,  etc. 


GOVERNMENT  339 

In  the  process  of  time  three  great  institutions  arise  which 
profoundly  affect  poHtical  evolution  and  which  make  the 
state  both  necessary  and  possible.  These  are  privaLe 
property,  a  leisured  governing  class,  and  ciyiljaw-  It  is 
both  inexpedient  and  unscientific  to  attempt  to  account 
for  the  origin  of  the  state  in  terms  of  any  one  particular 
exigency  or  institution.  Writers  like  Oppenheimer,  for 
example,  are  inclined  to  overstress  the  economic  and  ex- 
ploitive element  in  the  state.  He  holds  that  no  state  can 
arise  until  concepts  of  social  prestige  based  on  property 
dififerences  emerge,  and  until  sufficient  property  and  pro- 
ductive skill  exist  to  make  it  worth  while  for  one  class 
or  tribe  to  subject  and  exploit  another.  Hence  he  claims 
to  find  no  state  below  the  level  of  herdsmen.  "The  state," 
he  says,  "completely  in  its  genesis,  essentially  and  almost 
completely  during  the  first  stages  of  its  existence,  is  a 
social  institution,  forced  by  a  victorious  group  of  men  on 
a  defeated  group,  with  the  sole  purpose  of  regulating  the 
dominion  of  the  victorious  group  over  the  vanquished,  and 
securing  itself  against  revolt  from  within  and  attacks  from 
abroad.  .  .  ."  ^ 

It  is  much  more  important  for  our  present  purpose  to    (^^J^* 
indicate  the  hnes  along  which  the  state  has  developed  rather 
than  to  confine  attention  to  abstract  questions  of  its  origin. 
First,  we  note  an  increase  in  the  size  and  reach  of  the  gov- 
ernmental unit.     Next,  a  specialization  of  organs  exercis-    _  ^ 
ing   functions   formerly   distributed   and   undifferentiated. 
Third,  an  expansion  of_aulhQrity ;    paternalism ;    the  as-    ,  ^ 
sumption  of  functions  once  exercised  by  other  agencies.    ^--' 
Fourth,  a  new  alignment  in  the  incidence  of  pohtical  power,    ^ 
the  widening  of  the  classes  having  and  utilizing  it.     Finally,     ^ 

'  F.  Oppenheimer,  The  State,  p.  15,  chap,  ii,  etc.  Oppenheimer  is  a  disciple 
of  Gumplowicz,  whom  he  calls  "the  pathfinder"  in  the  study  of  politics  as 
race  conflict. 


340  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

,'the  wider  use  of  persuasion  and  compromise  instead  of 
'  force  as  methods  of  politicar  activity  and  expression. 

But  are  these  changes  tantamount  to  progress?  Gov- 
ernment, we  said,  is  insurance ;  hence  if  safety  and  rehef 
from  danger  are  categories  of  progress,  here  is  a  distinct 
contribution.  But  this  is  simply  a  shorthand  term  for 
three  elements  or  accomplishments :  first,  cooperation ; 
second,  coherence  or  isolation ;  third,  increase  in  size  by 
amalgamation  or  conquest  permitting  added  strength 
and  division  of  labor.  Bagehot  noted  that  political  hfe 
requires  cooperation,  and  that  cooperation  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent was  secured  early  in  history  by  customary  law.  But 
the  isolation  which  he  says  is  necessary  could  only  result 
from  custom  reenforced  by  religious  and  poHtical  organiza- 
tions. Political  and  mihtary  activity  developed  a  certain 
social  coherence  and  discipline,  still  within  the  bounds  of 
customary  law.  This  was  the  first  stage.  The  second 
came  through  government  by  discussion  which  broke  the 
cake  of  custom.^  Herbert  Spencer,  in  somewhat  similar 
terms,  indicated  that  a  pohtical  organization  may  serve 
progress  in  at  least  two  ways.  First,  by  securing  the  means 
for  cooperation  and  the  strengthening  of  social  structure. 
Second,  by  enlarging  the  size  of  the  group  to  permit  an 
extensive  division  of  labor.^  These  gains  are  not  by  any 
means  wholly  the  work  of  government ;  yet  it  is  evident 
enough  that  political  organization  contributed  in  no  small 
measure  to  their  accomphshment. 

But  certain  liabilities  appear  to  offset  in  part  the  assets 
secured  through  pohtical  organization.  Spencer  has  per- 
haps given  us  the  best  general  summary  as  to  how  politi- 
cal organization  may  hinder  progress.  His  first  objection 
comes  from  a  general  biological  principle  which  he  states 

'  Walter  Bagehot,  Physics  and  Politics,  p.  189. 
2  Principles  of  Sociology,  sec.  440  ff. 


GOVERNMENT  341 

(with  a  characteristic  rumble  as  of  heavy  siege  artillery) 
in  this  form:  "  Unchangcableness  of  structures  is  a  con- 
comitant of  arrested  growth."  Political  organization,  he 
says,  tends  to  a  certain  static  persistence  of  forms  which 
resist  change,  which  cling  to  the  past,  and  which  hinder 
new  forms  of  cooperation.  We  might  illustrate  here  by 
showing  how  inter-group  comity  is  hindered  by  petty 
nationalism,  and  how  a  fixed  bureaucracy  and  a  propertied 
class  resist  attempts  to  dispossess  them  of  vested  rights 
to  control.  Spencer's  second  subtraction  from  the  value 
of  political  organization  to  progress  is  a  criticism  of  the 
excessive  costs  of  government,  the  heavy  taxes,  etc.,  which 
may  make  political  forms  cost  more  than  they  are  really 
worth.  His  final  objection  —  and  this  is  characteristic 
of  the  Spencerian  philosophy  —  is  that  political  organiza- 
tion hinders  progress  by  hampering  individual  initiative 
through  coercive  regulation,  over-legislation,  and  the  fixing 
of  status. '^ 

From  the  standpoint  of  conceiving  the  welfare  of  the 
whole  social  group  in  its  most  inclusive  sense,  early  govern- 
ments were  monotonously  narrow  and  static.  They  were 
marked  by  bluff,  bravado,  prestige-suggestion,  wasteful- 
ness, pettiness,  conservatism,  and  routine.  To  a  certain 
extent,  throughout  all  the  political  and  economic  revolu- 
tions of  the  last  five  or  eight  thousand  years,  and  in  spite 
of  them,  government  has  remained  more  or  less  passive, 
the  conserver  of  past  gains,  the  keeper  of  the  group  con- 
science, the  arbiter  of  contending  and  ever  changing  in- 
terests and  rights.  It  has  been  preeminently  conserva- 
tive. Its  laws  and  judgments  have  been  interpretative 
of  well-recognized  needs  rather  than  experimental  in  the 
creating  of  new  needs  and  breaking  paths  for  their  wider 
satisfaction.     Nevertheless    certain    cumulative    ferments 

^  Ibid. ,  sec.  443  S. 


342  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

have  been  at  work,  which  tend  everywhere  to  dissolve 
and  break  down  old  political  structures.  These  are  prima- 
rily four :  (i )  industrial  development  (mechanical  inven- 
tion, transportation,  commerce,  creation  of  a  surplus  econ- 
omy) ;  (2)  education,  particularly  education  in  critical 
judgment;  (3)  discussion  instead  of  insurrection  as  a 
method  of  settling  political  differences;  (4)  the  gradual 
elimination  of  superstition  and  fetishism  as  props  of  govern- 
ment. These  things  have  meant  changes  in  the  size  and 
functions  of  the  state,  an  enlarging  class  of  "rulers" 
(changes  in  the  incidence  of  pohtical  power,  democracy, 
the  emergence  of  the  individual),  a  specialization  of  govern- 
mental organs,  and  the  development  of  new  political  tools, 
such  as  the  ballot.  Not  all  of  these  changes  have  been 
fully  accomplished,  however.  A  chart  of  them  would 
not  reveal  a  tidy  even  level  of  accomphshment ;  its  gross 
irregularities,  its  startling  gaps  alongside  of  high  reaches, 
would  suggest  rather  the  ragged  skyline  of  lower  New  York. 
On  the  whole,  then,  we  are  within  the  truth  when  we 
conclude  that  government  in  the  past  has  been  rather  a 
conservative  than  a  dynamic  element  in  social  hfe.  There 
are  certain  indications,  however,  that  from  the  executive 
branch  of  government  we  may  expect  something  more 
distinctively  progressive  than  we  have  had  in  the  past.^ 
New  legislation  usually  presupposes  exigencies  of  adminis- 
tration ;  and  courts  are  largely  concerned  with  interpret- 
ing and  defining  what  is  rather  than  what  may  be  or  ought 
to  be  in  the  future.  Hence  to  the  administrative  function 
falls  whatever  share  of  progressive  activity  may  inhere  in 
government.  And  this  share  is  increasing,  owing  to  the 
cumulative  action  of  faith  in  public  as  contrasted  with 
private  enterprise,  and  to  the  widening  sphere  of  govern- 
mental activity.  We  have  been  hampered  in  America  by 
^  Cf.  Ward,  Dynamic  Sociology,  i,  p.  526;  ii,  pp.  168,  212,  545,  574. 


GOVERNMENT  343 

Montesquieu's  doctrine  of  the  separation  of  powers  of 
government  —  a  real  modern  fetish.  This  means  mutual 
jealousy  between  courts,  legislatures,  and  the  executive. 
There  is  reason  to  hope,  however,  that  this  fetish  is  losing 
its  power.  Since  the  development  of  the  administrative 
branch  of  government  is  the  most  hopeful  hint  that  there 
may  be  a  connection  between  government  and  progress, 
every  new  administrative  development  or  experiment  is 
welcomed  by  certain  elements  in  the  community  and  is 
ruthlessly  assaulted,  vilified,  and  hindered  by  other  ele- 
ments. One  need  here  only  recall  the  history  of  the  parcel 
post,  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  of  govern- 
mental attempts  to  regulate  pure  food,  insurance  and  bank- 
ing, housing  and  public  safety.  Courts  and  legislatures 
have  interfered  and  the  "interests"  have  attempted  to 
throw  promising  reforms  off  the  track  through  threats  and 
bribes.  Perhaps  as  Ross  pointed  out,^  the  greatest  hin- 
drance is  the  jealousy  of  the  courts  and  the  legal  profession, 
for  two  reasons.  First,  they  consider  their  field  has  been 
usurped  and  that  any  extension  of  power  should  accrue 
to  them ;  second,  because  the  direct,  informal,  untram- 
meled,  truth-getting  procedure  of  administrative  bodies 
is  an  ill-veiled  insinuation  that  courts  are  antiquated,  static, 
and  ossified  in  their  own  traditions.  It  must  be  said,  how- 
ever, in  defense  of  many  courts,  that  they  are  sincerely 
trying  to  get  away  from  the  "sporting  theory  of  justice," 
or  trial  by  combat,  in  which  the  judge  is  merely  a  passive 
umpire.  But  until  courts  themselves  take  a  larger  hand 
in  attempting  to  ehcit  truth,  they  are  bound  to  compare 
rather  unfavorably  with  the  vigorous  and  militant  attitude 
of  our  better  investigative  and  administrative  bodies. 

The  problem  of  how  to  secure  a  capable  administrative 
body  with  continuity  and  coherence  of  purpose  is  at  pres- 

*  National  Conference  on  Universities  and  Public  Service,  N.  Y.,  1914. 


344  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ent  the  gravest  concern  in  progressive  politics.  How  can 
we  secure  an  executive  who  while  class-free  and  immune 
to  the  infection  of  crude  partisanship  is  at  the  same  time 
a  real  human  being  not  completely  anaesthetized  by  his 
job  nor  sunk  into  utter  routinism?  Schmoller  holds/ 
that  in  the  main  it  is  law  and  the  great  institutions,  par- 
ticularly government,  which  favor  or  embarrass  the  classes 
in  their  egoistic  struggle  for  economic  advantage.  Yet 
he  recognizes  that  class-dominance  may  exploit  govern- 
ment as  well  as  economic  privilege;  but  finds  the  way 
of  escape  in  creating  a  definite  civic  power  and  legal  con- 
trol based  upon  enlightened  monarchy  and  an  educated 
non-partisan  body  of  civil  servants.  In  practice,  says 
Schmoller,  these  civil  authorities  must  be  unhampered 
by  demagoguery  and  extreme  popular  democratic  control. 
They  must  bargain  and  manipulate,  play  off  class  against 
class,  but  on  the  whole  must  keep  constantly  in  mind  the 
benefit  of  the  social  whole  as  their  final  purpose.  In  other 
words,  Schmoller  sees  the  state  as  a  progressive  influence 
in  terms  of  an  aristocratic  body  of  experts  not  altogether 
unlike  Plato's  concept  of  governors,  or  of  St.  Simon's  and 
Comte's  vision  of  a  government  by  a  board  of  bankers 
and  other  experts.  Anti-capitalists,  like  Oppenheimer,^ 
foresee  a  different  form  of  the  state  in  which  there  will 
be  neither  classes  nor  class  interests,  but  instead  a  trained 
bureaucracy  which  will  have  attained  "that  ideal  of  the 
impartial  guardian  of  the  common  interests  which  nowa- 
days it  laboriously  attempts  to  reach." 

The  question  immediately  arises,  however,  as  to  whether 
this  body  of  experts  will  be  any  freer  from  mob  mind  and 
prejudice  than  are  our  present  cabinet  ministers.  Our 
experience  seems  to  justify  the  saying  that  we  need  rather 
more  conscience  than  more  knowledge  in  our  experts. 
^  Gnmdriss,  vol.  ii,  542  ff.  ^  j/jg  Slate,  chap.  vii. 


GOVERNMENT  345 

The  state  only  becomes  a  dynamic,  progressive,  and  cultural 
agent  when  it  is  actually  felt  and  understood  by  the  majority 
of  its  citizens.  In  other  words,  when  it  and  its  purposes 
are  consciously  accessible  to  the  majority  of  its  citizens ; 
when  it  realizes  Burke's  conception  and  ceases  to  be  merely 
a  repressive  police  organ;  when  it  controls  through  the 
lure  of  constructive,  forward-reaching  policies  and  not 
through  forcing  men  into  the  mold  of  the  past ;  when  its 
expression  through  government  is  fully  representative  and 
not  the  secret,  crafty,  narrow  machinations  of  a  small 
dominating  caste  or  class. 

Democracy  is  not  necessarily  the  final  form  of  the  state, 
whether  considered  as  an  interesting  method  of  organiza- 
tion or  as  a  tool  for  human  progress.  We  are  in  the  habit 
of  assuming  in  America  that  democracy  is  the  last  word 
in  political  organization  and  that  it  is  predestined  to  suc- 
cess and  progress.  But  democracy  is  still  a  dream  and  a 
hope  rather  than  a  fulfillment.  It  is  still  turbulent  and 
wasteful,  embarrassing  as  a  bombastic  relative,  uncertain 
as  a  child,  challenging  and  straining  our  faith.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  democracy  may  contribute  and  contribute  largely 
to  progress,  but  this  can  only  result  when  democracy  is 
willing  to  educate  .and  discipline  itself  to  the  point  of  an 
intelligent  appreciation  of  what  its  problems  and  interests 
are,  and  of  a  willingness  to  accept  responsibility  and  sub- 
ordinate itself  to  the  high  demands  of  successful  group 
policy.  Democracy  must  be  rescued  from  the  wicked 
step-mother,  Individualism.  It  is  not  to  be  overlooked, 
however,  that  political  participation  on  the  part  of  the 
masses  has  an  educative  value  which  ought  to  react  at 
least  indirectly  upon  governmental  efficiency  and  therefore 
in  the  direction  of  social  advance.  The  time-wasting  art 
of  discussion  is  enormously  valuable,  precisely  because  of 
its  disciplinary  and  educative  effects. 


346  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

The  whole  question  seems  to  focus  upon  the  relation 
between  government  and  education.  Put  in  its  baldest 
terms  the  problem,  is  this :  From  the  standpoint  of  social 
progress  does  the  state  exist  for  the  purpose  of  supporting 
education?  Or  is  education  the  handmaiden  and  chief 
ministrant  to  the  state,  therefore  to  be  dominated  by  it? 
Or  are  both  simply  co-partners  in  a  common  plan  for  social 
control  and  the  nurture  of  happy  and  promising  individual 
innovations  ? 

Montesquieu  stated  what  might  be  called  the  classical 
theory  of  the  dependence  of  educational  systems  upon  po- 
litical forms : 

"The  laws  of  education  will  thus  differ  in  each  sort 
of  government.  In  monarchies  they  will  have  as  their 
object  honor ;  in  republics,  virtue ;  in  a  despotism,  fear 


"  1 


Aristotle  expressed  the  Greek  attitude  towards  the 
relation  of  the  individual  to  the  state  by  declaring : 

"No  one  will  doubt  that  the  legislator  should  direct  his 
attention  above  all  to  the  education  of  the  youth,  or  that 
the  neglect  of  education  does  harm  to  states.  The  citizen 
should  be  molded  to  suit  the  form  of  government  under 
which  he  lives."  ^ 

There  is  plenty  of  evidence  that  governments  have 
taken  Aristotle's  hint  and  seized  educational  institutions 
for  their  own  ends.  Napoleon  and  Bismarck  and  Prus- 
sian Ministers  of  Education  stand  out  clearly  as  examples. 
This  seems  to  be  what  the  vitriolic  La  Rochefoucauld  had 
in  mind  when  he  set  down  as  one  of  his  maxims : 

"  Kings  make  men  as  they  would  pieces  of  money.  They 
give  them  what  values  they  will,  and  we  are  forced  to  re- 
ceive them  according  to  their  face  value,  not  according  to 
their  veritable  worth." 

1  Esprit  des  bis,  livre  iv,  chap.  i.  *  Politics,  viii,  i. 


GOVERNMENT  347 

It  has  been  one  of  the  great  boasts  of  modern  Germany 
that  educators  were  allowed  akademische  Freiheit.  Helm- 
holtz,  in  his  great  inaugural  address  as  Rector  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Berlin  in  1877,  admitted  that  liberty  of  teaching 
had  not  always  been  assured  either  in  Germany  or  in  ad- 
jacent countries ;   but  he  hastened  to  add  : 

"The  advanced  political  freedom  of  the  new  German 
Empire  has  brought  a  cure  for  this.  At  this  moment,  the 
most  extreme  consequences  of  materialistic  metaphysics, 
the  boldest  speculations  upon  the  basis  of  Darwin's  theory 
of  evolution,  may  be  taught  in  German  universities  with 
as  little  restraint  as  the  most  extreme  deification  of  papal 
infallibihty." 

Yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  university  teaching  favor- 
able to  the  Prussian  idea  of  the  state  and  of  militarism 
has  been  rewarded  and  fostered  by  the  German  ruling 
classes.  There  is  reason  for  believing  that  a  German  uni- 
versity is  scarcely  more  than  an  institution  for  providing 
state  officials  of  an  orthodox  turn  of  mind.^  Dr.  Henry 
Pritchett  in  a  very  conservative  paper  before  the  Ameri- 
can Sociological  Society,  in  1914,^  declared  that  while 
university  teaching  may  be  free  in  Germany,  it  is  largely 
because  the  government  selects  and  appoints  only  men 
who  are  "right"  and  "safe."  Social  pressure  is  thus 
directed  obliquely,  but  even  more  powerfully  than 
through  mere  repression  of  freedom  of  speech  or  of  teach- 
ing. The  marvelous  subservience  of  the  individual  to 
the  government  in  the  German  Empire,  as  shown  by 
the  conduct  of  Germans  high  and  low  in  the  present 
conflict,  is  an  illustration  of  how  education  to  regard 
the  interests  of  the  state  as  paramount  bears  its  inexo- 
rable fruitage. 

^  See  E.  C.  Moore,  School  and  Society,  June  19,  1915,  p.  889. 
2  Publications  of  the  Amer.  Social.  Soc,  ix  :  150-1. 


348  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Certain  types  of  education  accompany  inevitably  cer- 
tain political  institutions,  for  the  latter  obviously  reflect 
current  necessities  or  predilections  of  the  population  gener- 
ating them.  It  is  manifest,  for  example,  that  the  edu- 
cational system  of  a  great  empire  founded  on  conquest 
must  be  emphatically  military,  since  the  cement  which 
holds  intact  such  a  congeries-state  is  force,  not  common 
economic,  political,  artistic,  or  religious  interests.  Rome, 
the  ancient  Persian,  Hindu,  Chinese,  Arab,  Egyptian, 
Greek-Mykenian,  Merovingian-Carolingian  empires,  and 
Germany  under  the  Ottos  stand  out  as  illustrations. 

Again,  scholasticism  is  usually  associated  with  feudal 
or  some  other  form  of  despotism.  Montesquieu  found  the 
education  of  a  despotic  government  emphasizing  servile 
obedience  to  authority  and  ehminating  all  deliberating, 
doubting,  reasoning ;  to  desire  what  your  overlords  wanted 
you  to  desire  was  the  supreme  virtue  and  the  aim  of  edu- 
cation.^ And  this  is  the  essence  of  scholasticism.  This 
was  true  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was  true  of 
Japan  up  to  the  Meiji  era  (1868).  Prior  to  this  date  Japan 
was  in  a  state  of  organized  (but  disorganizing)  feudalism, 
without  national  education,  but  with  Buddhist  temple 
centers  of  arid  scholasticism.  With  feudal  lords  overbal- 
ancing the  central  government,  education  naturally  got  no 
national  sanction  nor  foothold  and  became  the  property 
and  tool  of  special  classes.  Usually  in  such  cases  the 
priesthood  seizes  the  opportunity  and  makes  the  temple 
the  school  and  a  strong  fortress  of  the  status  quo.  It  was 
so  in  Europe ;  it  was  so  in  Japan  during  medieval  Bud- 
dhistic supremacy. 

Coming  nearer  home,  we  might  point  out  that  owing 
to  an  old  alliance  between  government,  propertied  classes, 
and  the  church,  it  was  unwise,  until  quite  recently,  for 

^  Esprit  dcs  lois,  livre  iv,  chap.  iii. 


GOVERNMENT  349 

college  instructors  to  espouse  or  even  discuss  fairly  social- 
ism, free-trade,  Unitarianism,  or  changes  in  the  family. 
Elementary  and  higher  education  were  to  enforce  the  pres- 
ent conceptions  of  ownership,  domesticity,  religion,  and  the 
republican  form  of  government.  Evolution  is  still  tahoo 
in  some  institutions  of  learning,  and  the  "higher  criticism" 
likewise ;  both  being  ruled  out  because  of  some  lurking 
suspicion  that  they  menace  the  patriarchal  theory  of  God, 
religion,  the  family,  and  private  property.  A  California 
legislator  tried  not  long  ago  to  put  through  a  bill  making 
it  a  statutory  offense  to  teach  the  critical  view  of  American 
history.  He  feared  for  the  future  of  patriotism  and  private 
property  if  children  learned  that  some  of  our  Revolutionary 
ancestors  were  smugglers  and  land-speculators  as  well  as 
patriots.  In  the  long  run  governments  never  prosper 
under  a  system  of  education  by  suppression ;  a  progressive 
government  needs  for  its  own  health  and  efficiency  educa- 
tion by  discussion.  Discussion  can  always  be  kept  con- 
structive if  it  is  fair,  in  good  temper,  and  insists  on  taking 
account  of  all  the  elements  in  the  situation. 

With  this  in  mind  we  hardly  need  fear  any  undue  inter- 
ference by  modern  liberal  governments  in  details  of  educa- 
tion. Over  a  century  of  experience  in  America  and  in 
Europe  has  demonstrated  that  there  is  no  inherent  incom- 
patibility between  state  instruction  and  liberty  of  teach- 
ing. A  hundred  years  ago  Benjamin  Constant  could  say 
and  get  a  respectful  hearing : 

"Government  can  multiply  the  channels  and  means  of 
instruction,  but  ought  not  to  have  the  direction  of  them.  .  .  . 
By  assuming  the  sole  direction  of  education,  government 
assumes  to  itself  the  right,  and  takes  upon  itself  the  task 
of  maintaining  a  body  of  doctrine." 

And  William  von  Humboldt  concluded  that  national 
education,  that  is,  exclusive  state  education,  lay  wholly 


350  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

beyond  the  limits  within  v/hich  poHtical  agency  should 
properly  be  confined.  In  England,  even  as  late  as  1880-86, 
the  Liberty  and  Property  Defense  League  were  arguing 
for  laissez-faire  and  free  trade  in  education,  and  opposing 
every  attempt  to  introduce  the  state  as  a  competitor  or 
regulator  in  the  various  fields  of  private  enterprise,  includ- 
ing education  as  a  "gainful  industry."  Earl  Fortescue, 
a  member  of  the  league,  while  admitting  the  right  of  the 
state  to  compel  a  minimum  of  instruction,  denied  its  right 
to  maintain  gratuitous  education  ;  and  this  on  the  flimsy 
analogy  that  while  the  state  has  a  right  to  compel  men  to 
wear  clothes  it  need  not  furnish  them. 

Fortunately  we  have  outrun  these  constricting  ideas. 
Government  is  now  regarded  as  a  constructive  social  agency 
and  is  no  longer  limited  to  repressive  police  functions. 
And  we  no  longer  consider  for  a  moment  the  pretension 
that  education  is  a  "purchasable  commodity  that  can  be 
safely  allowed  to  exist  under  the  ordinary  laws  of  supply 
and  demand,  of  buying  and  selling."  (Adam  Smith  long 
ago  exempted  it  from  the  economic  law  of  supply  and 
demand.)  The  compulsory  feature  of  public  education  is 
also  accepted  with  scarcely  a  murmur  of  objection  except 
from  certain  rehgious  organizations  or  exploiters  of  child 
labor.  Whatever  criticisms  of  routine  and  inefficiency  may 
be  laid  at  the  door  of  our  pubhc  schools,  those  criticisms 
do  not  relate  to  the  undue  interference  of  government. 
This  is  due  in  part  to  our  extreme  lack  of  centraHzation  in 
government.  In  fact,  it  is  quite  within  the  range  of  possi- 
bility that  our  school  system  has  suffered  not  from  too  much 
government  and  centralized  control,  but  from  too  little. 

Our  modern  individualistic  idea  of  political  forms  reen- 
forced  by  a  doctrinaire  philosophy  which  smacked  strongly 
of  anarchism  has  left  its  mark  on  both  the  aims,  methods, 
and    organization    of    our    schools.     A    certain    aloofness, 


GOVERNMENT  351 

routine,  and  aridity  have  resulted.  But  the  developing 
bias  towards  sociahsm  and  internationalism  is  already- 
registering  itself  in  school  affairs.  And,  conversely,  along 
the  horizon  the  faintest  hints  of  dawn  suggest  the  begin- 
nings of  a  favorable  reaction  of  education  upon  govern- 
mental efficiency.  This  is  particularly  noticeable  in  the 
judicial  and  administrative  branches.  The  state,  like  the 
family,  is  not  a  fixed  form,  not  a  solution ;  it  is  a  continual 
becoming,  a  problem  of  infinite  diversity.  Education  is 
one  of  its  co-workers  in  the  ever-recurrent  attempt  to  re- 
solve the  problem  of  government.  It  may  not  be  too  great 
a  strain  upon  our  fund  of  imagination  to  hope  that  out  of 
a  free  partnership  between  these  two  agencies  in  particular 
may  come,  given  time  enough,  a  distinctive  contribution 
to  human  advance.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that  so  far 
there  is  more  of  prophecy  than  fullfilment.  Burke's  vision 
remains  a  vision ;  to  some  it  seems  scarcely  more  than  a 
mythical  pot  of  gold.  But  who  shall  deny  that  we  may 
overtake  the  rainbow  and  discover  the  pot  with  a  certain 
very  substantial  store  of  golden  minted  achievement? 
Meanwhile  there  is  no  denying  a  very  significant  trend 
toward  governmental  control  over  wider  areas  of  common 
concern,  toward  expert  administration,  and  toward  organ- 
ized criticism  as  a  check  upon  inefficiency  and  arbitrary 
use  of  power;  and  on  the  whole  this  trend  is  distinctly 
upward. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

LAW 

A  STUDENT  was  once  requested  to  report  on  the  topic, 
"Law  as  a  force  for  progress."  Being  a  victim  of  the 
'back  to  original  sources'  policy,  he  posted  off  to  talk 
with  several  lawyers  of  his  community  on  the  history  and 
philosophy  of  their  profession.  He  came  back  with  the 
sad  report  that  the  lawyers  refused  to  find  in  law  any 
progressive  element.  To  them  law  was  simply  law,  what 
is  and  what  has  been.  These  lawyers  seem  to  be  confirmed 
in  their  position  by  certain  contemporary  radical  teachers 
of  law.  Dean  Kirchwey,  for  example,  surely  gave  that  im- 
pression in  his  paper  on  "Law and  Progress"  at  the  Confer- 
ence on  the  Relation  of  Law  to  Social  Ends  in  New  York, 
1 91 3.  His  position  may  be  summarized  somewhat  after 
this  fashion : 

"  The  popular  will  hastens  to  express  itself  in  law,  be- 
lieving that  progress  should  record  itself  in  law ;  and  that 
law  is  an  apt  agent  of  progress.  These  beliefs  are  largely 
illusory.  They  are  due  to  the  convergence  of  two  prev- 
alent fictions  of  the  nineteenth  century :  Austin's  fiction, 
that  law  is  the  command  of  a  sovereign,  popular  or  other ; 
and  the  political  fiction,  that  this  sovereign,  in  our  case 
the  popular  sovereign,  can  only  command  what  is  right. 
The  popular  will  has  thus  come  to  regard  itself  as  right, 
and  as  deserving  to  be  immediately  crystallized  into  law. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  progress  owes  little  or  nothing  to 
law;  why  should  it  hope  to  gain  by  embodying  itself  in 
law?      Unofficial  social  control  may  well  do  more   than 

352 


LAW  353 

official  control.  And  of  these  official  agencies,  the  rep- 
resentative body  is  a  better  organ  of  social  reform  than  the 
direct  popular  will,  as  expressed,  for  example,  in  refer- 
endum." ^ 

But  this  may  well  be  somewhat  of  an  over-statement 
of  the  case ;  for  it  is  altogether  possible  to  conceive  that 
while  law  is  not  an  explosive  force,  nevertheless  in  its 
conservative  aspect  as  a  summary  of  past  approved  social 
methods,  as  the  codification  of  what  is  worth  while  in  past 
and  present  norms  of  social  conduct,  it  might  still  be 
reckoned  an  indispensable  element  in  human  advance. 
The  decisive  answer  lies  in  an  analysis  of  the  concept  of 
law  itself,  together  with  its  sources,  and  in  a  review  of  its 
place  in  the  history  of  social  origins  and  evolution. 

Perhaps,  as  Professor  Pollock  maintained,  law  cannot 
be  defined.  Certainly  the  older  definitions  in  terms  of 
metaphysical  content  or  religious  sanctions  are  unsatis- 
factory. For  example,  Hooker's,  to  the  effect  that  law 
is  "that  which  reason  in  such  sort  defines  to  be  good, 
that  it  must  be  done."  Such  a  definition  forgets  entirely 
the  basis  of  law  in  irrational  folkways  and  customs.  Kant's 
concept  of  law  as  the  "sum  total  of  the  conditions  under 
which  the  personal  wishes  of  one  man  can  be  reconciled  with 
the  personal  wishes  of  another  man,  in  accordance  with  a 
general  law  of  freedom"  would  have  been  sounder  if  he 
had  omitted  the  last  phrase  which  seems  to  assume  an 
eternal  principle  of  Reason  in  the  face  of  historic  Unreason. 
In  the  interest  of  clarity  the  only  safe  working  concept 
is  a  definition  in  terms  of  function.  From  this  standpoint 
law  reduced  to  its  simplest  terms  is  simply  a  body  of  rules 
of  acilnn  pstnblip^^'^  ^y  nnrmqlly  recognized  authority 
to  define  and  direct  duty  and  to  enforce  accepted  principles 

1  From  a  report  on  the  Conference  by  Professor  W.  E.  Hocking,  in  the 
Jour,  of  Philos.  Psychol,  and  Sci.  Methods,  lo :  520. 

2a 


354  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

of  justice.  In  other  words,  law  is  thp  '^nm  r.f  C|pr.ular  rules 
for  social  control. 

A  summary~ol  the  sources  of  these  rules  will  indicate 
how  complex  is  the  legal  fabric  and  how  diverse  one  might 
anticipate  its  workings  to  be.  Spencer  set  down  four 
such  sources  :  (i)  inherited  usages  from  the  undistinguished 
dead,  which  have  a  quasi-religious  sanction  —  we  have 
now  learned  to  call  these  folkways  or  mores ;  (2)  special 
injunctions  of  deceased  leaders,  the  distinguished  dead  — 
these  assume  the  character,  frequently,  of  sacred  law; 
(3)  the  will  of  the  predominant  man,  the  distinguished  living 
—  personal  allegiance  law ;  (4)  aggregate  opinion  of  the  un- 
distinguished living,  vague  but  influential.^  Here  in  brief 
are  set  out  the  guiding  threads  to  all  those  conflicts  between 
secular  and  ecclesiastical  law,  between  law  and  custom 
or  public  opinion,  between  the  radical  innovator  and  the 
estabHshed  legal  order,  between  constitutions .  and  statu- 
tory law.  Here  appears  also  the  key  to  such  apparent 
willfulness  as  Emerson's  daring  maxim,  "the  highest  virtue 
is  always  against  the  law,"  or  Edward  Carpenter's  essay, 
Defence  of  Criminals :  a  Criticism  of  Morality. 

The  first  service  of  law  to  social  development  and  prog- 
ress lay  in  its  definition  of  normal  group  relationships 
and  duties.  For,  as  Carter  points  out,  the  ''prime  requi- 
site of  human  society  is  that  each  member  should  know 
what  to  expect  in  the  conduct  of  others,  and  that  fair  ex- 
pectations should  not  be  disappointed."  ^  It  goes  with- 
out saying  that  this  service  was  rendered  ages  before 
law  became  definitely  crystallized  into  written  constitu- 
tions or  statutes.  Indeed,  it  is  perhaps  not  putting 
it  too  strongly  to  suggest  that  custom  law  is  far  more 
powerful  in  controlling  a  primitive  group  than  are  written 

^  Pr.  of  Social.,  sec.  533-4. 

2  Law,  its  Origin,  Growth,  and  Function,  p.  18. 


LAW  355 

laws  among  modern  peoples.  The  growth  in  size  of  modern 
governmental  areas  and  the  rise  of  the  critical  spirit  tend 
to  weaken  the  purchase  of  law  upon  the  individual.  There 
is  no  virtue  in  the  argument  that  because  law  is  largely 
concerned  with  negation,  with  defining  prohibitions,  there- 
fore it  is  not  a  constructive  agency.  It  is  true  that 
law  had  its  origins  largely  in  taboos  connected  with  the 
ghost  cult  and  ancestor  worship.  But  it  is  equally  true 
that  the  taboo  was  the  strongest  positive  force  for  social 
control  at  the  disposal  of  primitive  groups.  It  contained 
the  first  set  of  prohibitions,  negative  commandments, 
and  served  as  the  basis  for  police  regulations  as  well  as  for 
property  rights.  It  also  conserved  the  health  of  early 
societies  by  such  measures  as  the  prescriptions  against 
touching  corpses,  against  eating  unripe  fruit,  against  killing 
animals  in  certain  seasons.  Moreover,  every  Thou  shalt 
not  contains  its  implied  correlative,  the  positive  Thou  shalt. 
Thus  the  taboo  is  schoolmaster  to  the  principle  of  an  active 
ethical  attitude. 

Next,  it  is  evident  that  no  organism  can  exist  without 
appropriate  structure;  and  the  more  stable  and  delicate 
this  structure,  the  higher  the  organism  ranks  in  the  scale 
of  life.  Without  in  any  sense  pressing  the  organicist 
analogy,  the  same  may  be  said  of  societies,  having  in  mind 
law  as  an  eminent  feature  of  social  structure.  Indeed, 
Professor  Hobhouse  makes  stability  under  law  one  of  the 
very  tests  ofprogress.  In  building  the  tower  by  which 
we  mount  to  the  infinite  we  build  in  stories  or  stages.  We 
cannot  build  on  the  empyrean.  Each  story  must  rest 
upon  a  solid  floor.  This  floor  is  laid  in  law,  the  wisdom 
and  digested  experience  of  the  past.  If  we  choose  to  look 
upon  social  structure  in  its  coordinating  aspects,  then 
surely  law  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  binding  principle,  not  only 
between  contemporaries  in  a  social  group,  but  also  between  / 


356  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  past,  present,  and  future  of  that  group.  Thus  Kor- 
kunov,  in  his  brilHant  essay,  holds  that  the  factor  which 
institutes  and  controls  this  coordination  is  no  other  than 
law;  law  permits  coexisting  individuals  to  enjoy  hberty; 
it  protects  minorities,  fixes  bounds  for  all  new  striving  in- 
terests, the  predominance  of  which  would  quickly  ruin 
weaker  ones  and  deprive  society  of  conditions  indispen- 
sable to  its  own  development;  without  law  the  future 
would  be  sacrificed  to  the  exigencies  of  the  present.^ 
That  is  to  say,  law  facihtates  social  adjustments  through 
definition  and  compromise.  This  is  what  wise  old 
Counsellor  Pleydell  in  Guy  Mannering  strove  to  put  in 
his  quaint  way : 

"In  civilized  society  law  is  the  chimney  through  which 
all  that  smoke  discharges  itself  that  used  to  circulate 
through  the  whole  house  and  put  every  one's  eyes  out ; 
no  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  vent  itself  should  sometimes 
get  a  little  sooty." 

This  function  of  adjustment  comes  out  the  more  clearly 
if  expressed  in  terms  of  economy.  According  to  Professor 
Dewey,  law  may  be  looked  at  as  "describing  a  method  for 
employing  force  economically,  efficiently,  so  as  to  get  re- 
sults with  the  least  waste  ...  a  plan  for  organizing  other- 
wise independent  and  potentially  conflicting  energies  into 
a  scheme  which  avoids  waste,  a  scheme  allowing  a  maxi- 
mum utilization  of  energy."  ^ 

It  is  in  this  sense  of  social  stabihty,  of  defining  duties 
and  expectations,  of  adjustment  and  economy,  that  law 
I  may  be  said  to  further  the  progress  of  human  liberties. 
It  is  quite  true,  as  the  editor  of  a  labor  journal  recently 
pointed  out,  that  human  liberties  are  not  created  by  law, 
if  creation  be  taken  in  the  old  theological  sense  of  making 

^  General  Theory  of  Law  (Engl,  transl.),  pp.  323  ff. 

^  "  Force,  Violence,  and  Law,"  New  Republic,  Jan.  22,  1916,  p.  295. 


LAW  357 

something  out  of  nothing.  But  if  conceived  as  the  or- 
ganized  effort  which  crystalHzes  itself  in  constitutions  and 
codes,  tlien  law  certainly  does  deiine  and  even  create  liber- 
ties. The  liberties,  no  less  than  the  bondages  of  to-day, 
are  in  no  small  degree  the  creation  of  yesterday's  laws. 
And  the  true  legislator  not  wrongfully  considers  that  he 
has  a  hand  in  making  the  hberties  of  to-morrow. 

Law  might  be  called  the  silent  partner  in  the  firm  of 
influences  that  urge  us  onwards.  Because  of  its  silence 
it  has  been  often  taken  as  the  merest  matter  of  course  and 
neglected  by  historians.  But  according  to  a  writer  in 
The  Nation  it  was  Maitland's  chief  contribution  to  seize 
the  idea  that  while  the  growth  of  law  formed  an  important 
feature  in  the  history  of  all  civilized  countries,  it  formed 
the  essential  characteristic  of  the  history  of  England. 

"English  law  is  the  most  original  creation  of  the  English 
intellect  and  will  be  the  most  lasting  monument  of  Eng- 
land's greatness.  ...  he  established  once  and  forever  that 
English  law  lies  at  the  basis  of  English  pohtics,  and  at  the 
centre  of  the  development  of  the  English  constitution."  ^ 

Here  also  should  be  ranged  Professor  Marvin's  somewhat 
perfervid  plea  for  Roman  law  as  a  progressive  factor.  He 
finds  in  it  the  leading  agent  by  which  the  Romans  carried 
out  their  incorporation  of  the  West,  the  preserver  of  the 
principles  of  order  and  continuity  in  development,  a  con- 
siderahle  element  in  the  law  and  organization  of  the  Cath- 
olic  Church  and  in  methods  of  local  and  colonial  adminis- 
tration, an  influence  on  moral  philosophy  and  theology, 
and  thejnapiration  to  scientific  study  of  history .^ 

Of  course  it  remains  true  —  and  this  is  the  weakness  of 
Marvin's  argument  —  that  law  is  only  a  small  fraction  of 
the  sum  of  social  activity,  and  at  that  constitutes  little 

^  The  Nation  (American),  Sept.  29,  19 10. 
2  The  Living  Past,  115-17. 


t< 


/ 


358  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

more  than  the  record  of  other  social  interests  and  activi- 
ties. Current  maxims  indicate  this.  "Law  is  rather  the 
fruit  than  the  root  of  progress."  "Law  is  mighty,  mightier 
still  is  need."  When  Maine  said  that  the  movement  of 
the  progressive  societies  has  hitherto  been  a  movement 
from  statULsJU-Contract,  he  could  not  have  meant  that  law 
of  itself  had  accomplished  that  movement.  He  merely 
stated  that  the  various  influences  operating  upon  society 
had  produced  a  general  tendency  which  might  be  defined 

in    legal    terms    as    a    trQnci'fmn    frnm    mt;ff)marv-4^4i-^atns 

law  to  rational  or  contract  law.     Yet  he  does  seem  to  have 
conceived  that  law  somehow  or  other  covered  the  whole 
field  of  human  affairs  and  that  legal  knowledge  was  the 
best  guide  to  the  comprehension.     Law  and  metaphysics, 
he  says,  are  capable  of  employing  all  the  powers  and  capaci- 
ties of  the  human  mind,  and  of  these  law  is  as  extensive 
as  the  concerns  of  mankind  themselves.     But,  as  his  critics 
have  pointed  out,  this  leaves  the  whole  problem  of  social 
evolution   unexplained   save   by   the   circular   proposition 
that  the  laws  of  a  community  are  the  native  forces  in  its 
evolution.     But  this  is  just  as  barren  as  Herder's  concept 
of  native  force   {Sinnlichkeit)  as  the  original  progressive 
force.     It  is  equally  obvious  that  when  Savigny  and  his 
followers  of  the  new  historical  school  of  lawyers  in  the  first 
■  half  of   the  nineteenth   century  substituted   the   concept 
"juridical  consciousness"  of  the  people  for  the  eighteenth 
century  concept  of  "universal  reason"  as  the  progressive 
force,  they  were  simplv  modifying  termin.Qlogy.     They  did 
Httle  toward  putting  social  philosophy  upon  a  scientific  basis. 
Yet  having  said  that,  we  should  avoid  going  to  the  other 
extreme  and  denying  the  influence  of  legal  concepts  and 
the  personaHties  back  of  them.     The  fact  that  a  large 
percentage  of  the  world's  great  leaders  have  been  lawyers 
is  no  mere  happen-so.     If  the  war-captain  and  his  trusty 


LAW  359 

sword  must  hack  and  hew  a  way  through  a  barbarous 
wilderness  for  us  to  tread,  you  will  always  find  him  accom- 
panied by  the  man  of  law  to  give  his  hackings  and  hewings 
the  color  of~rig[ht  and  lustice,  or  to  nulhfy  them  as  social 
needs  may  require. 

Law  codes  and  lawyers  are  presumably  less  amenable 
to  the  influence  of  general  education  than  any  other  element 
in  social  life.  But  this  is  by  no  means  always  true.  Stoic 
teachings  colored  Roman  law.  In  fact  the  codes  of  Theodo- 
sius  and  Justinian  were  based  upon  the  constantly  reiterated 
Stoic  doctrine  of  a  law  of  nature.  Hence  the  Roman 
lawyer  Ulpian  said,  "As  far  as  natural  law  is  concerned  all 
men  are  equal.  ...  By  natural  law  all  men  are  born  free," 
etc.  And  Cicero  declared  that  nothing  is  law  that  is 
not  reason.  He  who  runs  may  perceive  the  persistence  of 
these  ideas  of  natural  law  and  reason  in  Puffendorf,  in 
Rousseau,  and  the  other  humanitarians  or  doctrinaire 
philosophers  who  played  the  prelude  to  the  French  Rev- 
olution, and  in  our  own  Jefferson,  especially  in  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence. 

We  need,  on  the  other  hand,  go  no  farther  than  the  writings 
of  lawyers  themselves  to  make  out  a  good  case  against 
law  as  a  hindrance  to  social  progress.  It  will  suffice  to 
mention  three  or  four  reasons.  First,  the  very  stability  of  (£) 
legal  institutions  makes  them  resistant  to  social  exigencies. 
IMaine  confessed  flatly  that  among  progressive  peoples, 

"Social  necessities  and  social  opinion  are  always  more 
or  less  in  advance  of  law.  We  may  come  indefinitely  near 
to  the  closing  of  the  gap  between  them,  but  it  has  a  per- 
petual tendency  to  reopen.  Law  is  stable ;  the  societies 
we  are  speaking  of  are  progressive.  The  greater  or  less 
happiness  of  a  people  depends  on  the  degree  of  prompti- 
tude with  which  the  gulf  is  narrowed."  ^ 

^  Ancient  Law,  chap.  ii. 


360  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

So  true  is  this  that  sometimes  revolt  is  justifiable,  for  only 
the  violent  protest  of  revolution  can  decide  the  issue  be- 
tween the  higher,  real  law  of  social  exigency  and  a  time- 
worn  shell  of  formal  law.  ''An  ordered  society  is  like  a 
field  which  has  periodically  to  be  touched  and  torn  by  the 
plow  before  the  soil  receives  the  virtue  to  renew  its  creative 
power."  ^  It  has  all  but  required  revolution  to  break  the 
crust  of  prestige  formed  over  Europe  by  Roman  Law  and 
over  the  United  States  by  English  Common  Law.  Normally, 
however,  a  vigorous,  healthy  radicalism  suffices.  To  take  a 
somewhat  faded  analogy :  law  represents  the  base  which, 
attacked  by  the  acids  of  radicalism  and  change,  precipi- 
tates the  salt  of  healthy  progress.  This  is  what  Walter 
Bagehot  meant  by  setting  down  law  and  government  by 
discussion  as  the  two  prerequisites  to  progress.  Law  lays 
the  cake  of  custom,  discussion  cracks  and  dissolves  it. 
r^  Secondly,  that  very  rigidity  is  partly  accounted  for  b^ 
^'^  the  early  association  of  law  with  religion.  While  at  the 
present  time  custom,  and  especially  religious  custom,  may 
be  of  slight  importance  as  a  primary  source  of  law  (due  to 
the  dechne  of  ancestor  worship,  of  the  family  as  a  political 
unit,  of  superstition  and  fear  of  the  unknown,  to  the  growth 
of  individuahsm  and  independent  thought,  to  the  increase 
of  positive  legislation  and  judicial  decisions),^  yet  there  was 
a  time  when  the  reverse  was  true ;  so  true  that  Maine  set 
the  fact  down  as  having  prevented  or  arrested  the  progress 
of  far  the  greater  part  of  mankind.^ 

''Nothing,"  says  Cherry,  "so  much  checks  the  growth 
of  law  in  a  community  as  the  identification  of  it  with 
religion.  The  recognition  of  the  sacredness  of  rules,  of 
Law  natural!}'  offers  a  very  strong  obstacle  to  alteration 

^  Ferrero,  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  i,  1 16 ;  cf.  SchmoUer,  Am.  Jour. 
Sociol.,  20 :  517. 

2  Cf.  L.  Dee  Mallonee,  Amer.  Law.  Rev.,  49 :  238. 
^  Ancient  Law,  chap.  iv. 


'"''^^^^^m'^^T^nd  in  them.     Nothing  has  so  much  faciHtated    ' 
legal  progress  among  European  nations  as  the  fact  that 
the  religion  of  all  of  them  is  derived  from  a  foreign  source."  ^ 

Again,  the  machinery  by  which  formal  law  is  administered     (^\ 
tends  to  reenforce  its  laggard  and  inflexible  character.     It 
is  perhaps  true,  as  Dean  Kirchwey  observed  in  the  paper 
already  cited,  that  the  chief  difficulties  in  making  law  an 
agency  for  social  reform  spring  from  the  judicial  function. 
There  are,  it  appears,  at  least  four  reasons  for  this :    First,  QJ 
the  professional  attitude  of  the  judges  themselves.     The 
judicial   fil'ftTtion   is    a    spccialjzation    williin    tlie    general 
field  of  law  ;  moreover,  the  very  seclusion  and  independence 
of  the  judge  heightens  his  specialization  and  therefore  his 
cloistered  insensitivity  to  public  opinion.     Bench  law  thus 
tends  to  become  a  selt-suthcient,  self -inclosed  body;    ver- 
bal inspiration,  driven  out  of  theology,  finds  refuge  in  the 
bench.     The  outsider  is  hardly  to  be  blamed  for  wonder- 
ing if  the  vicious  circle  can  be  broken  save  by  revolution.   . 
A   second    reason   is    the   domination   of   precedent.     An  ^««  J 
Ohio  judge  in  a  notable  decision  upholding  the  teacher's 
right  to  join  a  union  went  out  of  his  way  to  castigate  this 
judicial  weakness.     Said  the  court : 

"To  make  a  precedent  a  fetish  to  worship  is  to  go  round 
and  round  a  small  circle  and  never  to  progress.  Courts 
must  from  time  to  time  make  new  precedents  or  become 
stumbhng  blocks  in  the  way  of  progress." 

A  third,  to  which  the  second  is  really  but  a  corollary:  _the  (^'-'^  ^ 
theory  of  separation   of  powers  which  debars  the  courts 
from  exercising  legislative  functions  and  forces  them  iJack,^ 
upon  the  principle  of  precedentT    Fourth,  the  amount  of  V^^  ^ 

public  opinion  necessary  to  penetrate  judicial  remoteness 
before  a  change  in  law  can  Ijc  effected  through  the  courts. 

1  Growth  of  Criminal  Law,  40;  cf.  Spencer,  Princ.  of  Sociol.,  sec.  531. 


362  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

While  in  a  representative  body  change  is  comparatively 
"light-footed,"  the  courts  feel  the  pressure  of  public  opinion 
only  when  it  has  become  universal. 

The  real  reason  why  we  cannot  look  to  courts  of  justice 
for  very  serious  contributions  to  social  progress  is  that  they 
are  concerned  with  remedying  abuses  which  have  already 
been  suffered  to  happen ;  they  do  not  or  cannot  anticipate 
the  fact ;  their  work  is  mere  tinkering  and  patching,  the 
treating  of  "cases"  in  much  the  same  spirit  that  marked 
elder  methods  of  charity  and  medicine;  the  preventive 
and  constructive  phases  of  law  seem  so  far  to  have  remained 
outside  their  vision.  Still  there  are  evidences  that  law, 
legislators,  and  courts  of  law  are  beginning  to  assume  a 
more  active  and  positive  role  in  movements  for  social 
advance.  Ancient  law  was  markedly  recapitulatory,  the 
summation  of  past  experience  and  wisdom.  Modern 
law  retains  this  conservative  and  retrospective  trait,  but 
adds  the  principle  of  revision  and  tends  more  and  more 
towards  prevision.  The  old  doctrine  of  the  complete 
separation  of  the  branches  of  government  is  crumbling. 
The  highest  courts  are  abandoning  their  old  position  as 
passive  interpreters  of  literalism  in  the  law  and  are  taking 
to  themselves  the  task  of  conscious  constructive  interpre- 
tation. An  Illinois  judge  declares  that  he  cannot  overlook 
as  a  judge  what  he  knows  as  a  man.  Another  judge 
announces  the  rule  of  reason.  The  present  Lord  Chief 
Justice  of  England  says  English  courts  exist  not  to  expound 
law  but  to  dispense  justice.  Hence  law  may  become  a 
more  potent  arm  for  social  welfare  and  progress  than 
has  hitherto  been  imagined  possible.  It  may  not  only 
register  and  conserve  the  standards  of  past  right  conduct, 
but  may  actually  set  new  and  higher  ones.  Of  course 
nobody  expects  that  merely  making  or  interpreting  laws 
is  going  to  usher  in  a  millennium.     It  is  a  truism  that  you 


LAW  363 

cannot  legislate  men  good.  Aristotle,  to  be  sure,  declared 
that  the  special  business  of  the  legislator  is  to  create  in 
men  this  benevolent  disposition ;  but  at  the  same  time  he 
recognized  that  law  is  only  a  convention,  a  surety  to  one 
another  of  justice,  and  has  no  real  power  to  make  the 
citizens  good  and  just.  Rightly  conceived,  however,  law 
is  a  means  of  setting  up  standards  for  imitation,  and  in 
that  sense  may  be  considered  as  a  definite  force  for  making 
citizens  good  and  just  and  healthy. 

Most  or  all  of  the  impetus  which  is  driving  the  law  along 
new  lines  has  not  been  derived  from  within  itself,  but  is 
the  result  of  healthy  collisions  with  other  social  institutions 
of  more  pronounced  dynamic  cast.  In  the  history  of  Eng- 
lish law  Dean  Pound  finds  two  important  examples  of 
breaking  up  the  undue  rigidity  of  a  legal  system  through 
receiving  into  it  ideas  developed  outside  of  legal  thought. 
First,  in  the  seventeenth  century  the  "  unmoraHty  "  o^  the 
law  was  overthrown  by  Courts  of  Chancer^^  and  the  de- 
velopment of  equity.  Second,  in  the  eighteenth  century 
the  industrial  revolution  and  its  forerunners  injected  new 
elements  into  the  law.  A  third  element,  socializing  the 
law,  is  fyointr  on  r\aw~} 

Just  what  this  growing  sociological  concept  of  jurispru- 

1  Roscoe  Pound,  "  Social  Problems  and  the  Courts,"  Am.  J .  Soc,  18  :  332- 
3.  In  contrast  with  this  broad  view  of  one  of  the  greatest  law  teachers  of 
his  time,  I  cannot  forbear  setting  down  a  waspish  remark  reported  by  the 
N.  Y.  Evening  Post  from  President  N.  M.  Butler's  Johns  Hopkins  University- 
address  early  in  191 5.  He  said  :  "Just  now  law  is  under  attack  from  a  curi- 
ous mixture  of  sentiment  and  love  that  calls  itself  sociological  jurisprudence, 
and  which  I  understand  to  be  a  sort  of  legal  osteopathy."  It  is  quite  evident 
that  the  man  who  could  argue  passionately  before  St.  Louis  business  men 
against  changing  our  form  of  government,  and  at  the  same  time  associate 
himself  with  Boss  Barnes  in  an  attempt  to  dominate  the  New  York  State 
Republican  Convention  is  hardly  the  man  to  understand  or  sympathize  with 
a  certain  trend  of  the  legal  mind  in  the  direction  of  recognizing  that  law  is  an 
outgrowth  of  group  life  for  the  realization  of  group  ends;  hence  that  it 
changes  or  should  change  as  the  economic,  social,  and  political  bases  of  group 
life  shift. 


364  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

dence  is  has  been  ably  expounded  by  a  former  editor  of 
an  influential  law  journal,  TJie  Green  Bag.  Mr.  Spencer 
tells  us  that  it 

''refuses  to  isolate  the  law  from  life  in  general  and  that 
it  treats  law  not  as  an  inflexible  formula,  to  be  expounded 
only  by  accomplished  technicians,  but  also  as  a  flexible 
social  institution  to  be  treated,  like  all  other  institutions, 
with  regard  to  the  utility  of  the  end  served  and  the  nature 
of  the  function  it  seeks  to  fulfill.  .  .  .  With  the  sociological 
jurist  the  readjustment  of  the  law  to  meet  new  social  de- 
mands is  not  simply  an  actual  tendency  but  a  moral  neces- 
sity. .  .  .  Only  through  such  adjustment  can  the  law  attain 
its  highest  efficiency.  .  .  .  The  immediate  result  of  the  new 
attitude  will  be  an  altered  interpretation  of  current  prob- 
lems of  social  and  economic  legislation,  and  there  must  inevi- 
tably be  a  reaction  against  the  timeworn  precedents  of  the 
common  law  and  a  deliberate  attempt  to  substitute  new  rules 
for  old.  This  means  that  many  of  the  highly  individualistic 
conceptions  which  survive  in  the  common  law,  and  are  really 
anachronistic,  being  derived  from  doctrines  long  since  aban- 
doned, must  yield  to  a  modern  ideal  of  social  justice."  ^ 

It  seems  quite  beyond  doubt  that  this  healthy  change 
in  the  spirit  of  lawyers  and  courts  has  been  the  direct 
product  of  recent  education,  and  especially  education  in 
the  social  sciences,  notably  economics,  political  science, 
and  sociology.  And  so  far  there  seems  to  have  been  no 
attendant  loss  of  that  technical  grasp  or  logical  power  which 
the  elder  discipline  of  mathematics  and  Latin  was  presumed 
to  confer.  If  the  making  of  law  can  be  improved,  its 
administration  permeated  with  the  spirit  of  social  ends, 
and  its  teaching  kept  on  the  high  level  previsioned  by  the 
sociological  jurists,  law,  in  most  of  its  aspects,  can  be  defi- 
nitely counted  on  as  a  dependable  ally  in  any  forward 
movements  society  may  will  to  make. 

1  A.  W.  Spencer,  "Sociology  and  the  Law,"  Mid-West  Quarterly, 
2 :  156-61. 


CHAPTER  XXV 
PUBLIC   OPINION 

■  Public  opinion  can  only  by  a  certain  straining  of  the 
truth  be  called  a  social  institution.  Yet  people  talk  of  it 
as  though  it  were  the  solidest  and  most  powerful  of  all  our 
institutions.  They  also  speak  of  educating  pubUc  opinion 
and  orienting  it  in  the  direction  of  progress.  And  it  will 
be  recalled  that  Spencer  made  it  ancillary  to  law  and  one 
of  its  four  sources :  that  is,  if  we  are  correct  in  interpret- 
ing as  public  opinion  his  phrase,  aggregate  opinion  of  the 
undistinguished  living.  What  is  it,  then?  Has  it  a  solid 
structure  through  which  to  function,  or  is  it  the  stuff  that 
dreams  and  nightmares  are  made  of?  Was  Sir  Robert 
Peel  right  in  describing  it  as  "that  great  compound  of 
folly,  weakness,  prejudice,  wrong  feeling,  right  feeling, 
obstinacy,  and  newspaper  paragraphs"?^  Is  it  'mental 
contagion'?  If  so,  M.  Le  Bon  tells  us  it  is  the  most  puis- 
sant factor  in  the  propagation  of  revolutionary  movements.^ 
To  use  the  more  familiar  term,  is  it  mob  mind?  Hardly. 
It  differs  from  mob  mind  in  that  while  energetic  it  is 
more  rational  and  less  explosive.  Mob  mind  is  passion; 
public  opinion  appears  rather  as  sublimated  sentiment. 
Public  opinion  is,  theoretically  at  least,  the  product  of 
orderly  deliberate  persuasion,  while  mob  mind  is  the  re- 
sult of  sudden  intense  hypnotic  suggestion  which  drowns 

1  Cf .  J.  W.  Jenks,  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  i,  i6o. 
^Figaro,   Jan.  ii,  1913. 

36s 


366  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

all  the  normal  play  of  rival  suggestions  and  motives. 
Is  it  the  'spirit  of  the  people'?  If  so,  it  is  too  vague  to 
be  reckoned  with  from  an  institutional  standpoint.  Is 
it  the  whole  of  a  group's  mental  activity?  If  so,  it  is  a 
misnomer ;  for  instinctive  reactions,  folkways,  tradition,  or 
matters-of-course  are  hardly  to  be  considered  as  opinion, 
either  functioning  or  as  a  precipitated  product,  any  more 
than  breathing  or  hunger  is  opinion.  At  any  rate  it  differs 
from  custom  or  the  mores  by  virtue  of  its  energy ;  it  is 
active,  while  custom  is  passive.  Is  it  the  social  mind? 
Or,  better,  is  it  the  social  mind  in  the  throes  of  a  problem 
or  crisis  ?  Some  eugenists  seem  to  think  it  is.  Sir  Francis 
Galton,  for  instance,  held  that  public  opinion  is  commonly 
far  in  advance  of  private  morality,  because  society  as  a 
whole  keenly  appreciates  acts  that  tend  to  its  advantage, 
and  condemns  those  that  do  not.  Indeed,  the  eugenists 
look  to  'educated  public  opinion'  or  to  'enlightened 
pubHc  opinion'  for  the  realization  of  their  hopes  of  human 
betterment  through  selective  breeding.  So  every  other 
social  reformer  appeals  or  claims  to  appeal  to  public  opinion 
or  the  'best  public  sentiment.' 

We  are  told,  too,  that  public  opinion  is  the  "viewpoint 
of  the  effective  majority,"  that  it  is  the  "common  sense 
and  common  thought  of  most  people,"  or  that  it  is  "the 
average  of  what  men  believe  and  how  they  feel  upon  a 
given  subject,  within  a  given  social  unit."  But  since 
society  is  made  of  men,  the  voice  of  a  social  majority  must 
be  neither  God's  nor  the  devil's,  but  man's.  Hence  such 
a  concept  brings  us  little  nearer  the  problem  of  relating 
opinion  to  progress,  unless  we  assume  a  potential  drive 
of  human  opinion  irresistibly  toward  perfection :  and  this 
seems,  to  say  the  least,  unwarrantable.  Again,  is  public 
opinion  a  synonym  for  public  conscience  or  the  "pre- 
vailing sense  of  right"?     It  may  be,  but  such  a  concept 


PUBLIC  OPINION  367 

is  static  rather  than  functional.  Is  it  '  public  spirit '  ?  If 
it  is,  and  if  we  are  pessimistically  inclined  or  can  believe 
Mr.  Chesterton,  we  have  but  little  of  it  and  small  prospects 
of  getting  it.  He  declares  that  we  shall  have  a  public 
washhouse  and  a  public  kitchen  long  before  we  have  a 
public  spirit ! 

"Public  opinion,"  said  Lester  F.  Ward,  "means  the  sum 
total  rather  of  the  questions  which  are  under  discussion,"  ^ 
than  mere  mental  activity  in  general.  Or  shall  we  say,  a 
general  likemindedness  or  prevailing  opinion  on  a  topic 
over  which  sober  and  reasonable  discussion  has  been  pro- 
voked? If  so,  it  is  an  open  question  as  to  which  is  the  val- 
uable thing,  the  opinion  or  the  discussion.  Public  opinion, 
or  sound,  ordered  social  judgment  must  therefore  be  marked 
off  from  popular  whim  or  popular  impression.  The  latter 
may  consist  of  highly  prevalent,  but  frothy,  fatuous  super- 
ficialities, passed  along  by  newspapers,  preachers,  or  pro- 
fessional propagandists.  The  former  is  serious  and  pro- 
found even  if  mistaken,  and  usually  gains  headway  slowly 
through  the  spread  of  genuine  conviction.^  If  illustration 
be  not  redundant,  we  might  take  the  popular  jingo  demand 
that  Senor  Huerta  should  be  punished  for  insulting  the 
American  flag  as  an  example  of  shallow  popular  impression  ; 
the  thoughtful  conclusion  that  Mexico  must  be  brought 
to  some  show  of  order  and  security  as  an  example  of  ripe 
public  opinion.  Or,  again,  the  hasty,  ill-considered  cry 
for  mothers'  pensions  is  largely  popular  impression ;  the 
demand  for  workmen's  compensation  acts  and  social  in- 
surance is  mature  public  opinion. 

From  the  president  of  Harvard  University  comes  a 
most  thoroughgoing  analysis  of  public  opinion.  He  criti- 
cizes such  lame  definitions  as  we  have  exposed  and  shows 
the  confusion  that  they  beget.     For  instance,  mere  majority 

'  Applied  Sociology,  44.  ^  Cf.  Cooley,  Social  Organization,  123. 


368  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

is  an  insufficient  criterion,  for  that  is  force,  compulsion, 
not  public  opinion.  Nor  is  unanimity  a  safe  test ;  inten- 
sity is  better,  for  ardor  may  outweigh  mere  numbers.  In 
short, 

"  public  opinion,  to  be  worthy  the  name,  to  be  the  proper 
motive  force  in  a  democracy,  must  be  really  pubhc ;  and 
popular  government  is  based  upon  the  assumption  of  a 
public  opinion  of  that  kind.  In  order  that  it  may  be  public 
a  majority  is  not  enough,  and  unanimity  is  not  required, 
but  the  opinion  must  be  such  that  while  the  minority  may 
not  share  it,  they  feel  bound,  by  conviction,  not  by  fear,  to 
accept  it ;  and  if  democracy  is  complete  the  submission  of 
the  minority  must  be  given  ungrudgingly." 

Moreover,  it  must  be  opinion  not  mere  tradition  or  prej- 
udice or  subjection  to  authority ;  it  need  not,  however, 
be  wholly  rational  understanding ;  it  always  betrays  a 
commingling  of  popular  desire ;  and  it  may  be  in  part  a 
sense  of  incongruity,  inconsistency,  or  injustice.  To  have 
a  real  public  opinion  on  any  question,  the  bulk  of  the 
people  must  be  in  a  position  to  determine  of  their  own 
knowledge,  or  by  weighing  evidence,  a  substantial  part  of 
the  facts  required  for  a  rational  decision.  Since  racial 
and  religious  cleavage  interferes  with  the  formation  of  real 
public  opinion,  a  certain  homogeneity  of  population  is 
essential  both  to  sound  opinion  and  to  popular  government ; 
at  least  a  homogeneity  sufficient  to  be  assured  that  the 
minority  is  willing  to  accept  the  decision  of  the  majority 
on  all  questions  normally  expected  to  arise.  Racial  dif- 
ferences are  not  an  absolute  bar  to  political  homogeneity, 
as  the  experience  of  Switzerland  proves.  The  prime 
necessity  is  that  all  elements  in  a  population  should  be 
capable  of  common  aims  and  aspirations,  should  have  a 
common  stock  of  political  traditions,  should  be  open  to  a 
ready  interchange  of  ideas,  and  should  be  free  from  inherited 


PUBLIC  OPINION  369 

prejudices  that  prevent  mutual  understanding  and  sym- 
pathy.^ Two  other  requisites  follow  as  corollaries,  namely, 
freedom  of  expressing  dissent  (that  is,  freedom  of  assem- 
blage, speech,  discussion,  and  publication),  and  freedom  of 
organization  in  every  domain  of  interest,  in  so  far  as  it  does 
not  breed  hindering  factions. 

In  line  with  this  analysis  I  am  constrained  to  add  another, 
which  although  prompted  by  a  specific  issue,  namely, 
the  mental  attitude  of  Americans  towards  the  European 
war,  still,  it  seems  to  me,  goes  to  the  roots  of  the  whole 
question  of  pubHc  opinion.  Most  current  reactions  to 
the  war,  said  this  writer,^  have  not  been  opinion  at  all, 
but 

"mere  batteries  of  guns  in  an  emotional  warfare.  In 
all  the  discussion  little  emerges  that  is  not  articulate  emo- 
tion or  articulate  group-interest.  This  variedly  articulate 
anger,  disgust,  prejudice,  moral  reaction,  has  little  more 
right  to  be  termed  opinion  than  the  start  one  gives  when 
one  meets  a  bear.  It  is  instinctive  response  clothed  with 
words." 

But  words  or  phrases  are  not  opinions  :  "the  object  of  most 
words  is  to  short-circuit  thought."  Phrases  tend  to 
stifle  discussion.  A  good  phrase  is  un  fait  accompli;  as 
to  discussion,  or  opinion,  there's  an  end  on't !  Genuine 
opinion  is  neither  cold  logical  judgment  nor  irrational 
feeling.  It  is  scientific  hypothesis,  to  be  tested  and  revised 
as  experience  widens.  It  is  a  view  of  a  situation  based 
on  grounds  short  of  proof :  to  be  valid  it  must  be  just  short 
of  proof,  but  neither  flabby  nor  uncertain.  Good  opinion 
does  not  try  to  carry  water  on  both  shoulders,  but  is  gen- 
uine conviction  —  a  provisional  conviction,  at  least,  to 
be  held  as  a  conviction  until  new  hght  appears  —  pressing 

*  A.  L.  Lowell,  Public  Opinion  and  Popular  Government,  14-15,  24,  34-5. 
2  Editorial,  New  Republic,  Sept.  18,  1915,  pp.  171-2. 
2b 


37° 


THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


all  the  time  for  proof.     Hence  good  opinion  though  firm 
is  the  diametrical  opposite  of  dogma. 

"Dogma  is  hard  and  unyielding,  a  sort  of  petrified  emo- 
tion. It  is  constantly  masquerading  as  proof,  as  genuine 
opinion  never  does.  You  do  not  revise  dogmas.  You 
smash  them." 

Summarizing  these  discussions,  we  can  now  extract, 
perhaps,  a  clearer  idea  of  the  real  nature  of  pubUc  opinion. 
First,  it  is  real  opinion,  scientific  hypothesis,  if  you  please, 
but  not  scientific  fact,  nor  dogma,  nor  mere  feeHng.  Second, 
it  is  not  to  be  set  down  as  synonymous  with  majority 
opinion,  or  average  opinion,  or  the  consensus  of  opinions 
of  the  man  in  the  street,  or  the  mean  between  conservative 
and  radical,  upper  and  lower  class  opinion.  It  is  not 
democratic  in  the  sense  of  a  pure  democracy  with  universal 
direct  participation  in  government,  or  in  the  sense  that 
one  man's  voice  is  just  as  good  as  another's.  PubUc 
opinion  is  rather  of  the  selective  or  representative  type  of 
democratic  discussion.  Third,  it  is  the  result  of  discussion 
and  effort  and  not  mere  easy  emotional  explosion  or  in- 
stinctive reaction.  Fourth,  it  is  the  habit  of  thinking, 
not  on  indifferent  or  casual  matters,  but  upon  pubHc  con- 
cerns, and  is  therefore  the  index  of  a  sense  of  public  re- 
sponsibility. Next,  it  means  the  open  mind,  free  and 
willing  to  be '  convinced  by  argument,  and  which  there- 
fore offers  a  certain  leverage  to  education.  Finally,  and 
most  important  of  all,  it  must  mean  rather  less  mere  opin- 
ion of  the  public,  good  as  that  may  be,  and  much  more 
sound  opinion  for  the  public. 

The  way  is  now  cleared  for  our  real  problem,  namely, 
the  function  of  public  opinion,  and  to  be  more  precise, 
its  connection  with  social  advance.  But  since  any  dis- 
cussion of  the  nature  of  an  institution  covers  by  impUca- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  371 

tion  some  reference  to  its  functions,  we  need  only  extract 
from  the  foregoing  analyses  their  functional  bearings.  In 
brief,  the  task  of  public  opinion  is  twofold  :  social  control 
and  readjustment  through  criticism ;  in  other  words, 
conservation  and  innovation.  Between  these  two  poles 
it  picks  its  way,  on  the  one  hand  cracking  and  dissolving 
the  cake  of  custom  ;  on  the  other,  holding  in  check  the  blind, 
chaotic  forces  of  mob  passion.  Hence  it  works  through 
generalizing  the  ideas  of  selected  groups  or  individuals, 
some  of  which  are  conservative,  others  distinctly  forward- 
reaching  and  adventurous.  Both,  from  the  standpoint 
of  progress,  are  essential.  But  the  critical  phase  is,  if 
anything,  the  more  important. 

A  progressive  society  is  a  flexible  minded  society  whose 
chief  concern  is  not  to  adapt  its  life  to  its  tradition,  but  to 
overhaul  its  tradition  in  the  process  of  ready  adaptation 
to  new  social  exigencies.  The  critical  function  of  organized 
protest  is  therefore  vital  to  public  opinion  if  it  is  to  be 
counted  a  dynamic  factor. '^  And  it  is  this  aspect  of  public 
opinion  that  relates  it  to  law.  It  tends  constantly  to 
bridge  that  gap  which,  as  Maine  pointed  out,  always 
separates  the  law  from  social  needs.  Public  opinion  is 
more  flexible  and  less  mechanical  than  law,  supplements  it, 
and  might  be  called  a  recruiting  agent  for  filling  up  law's 
depleted  regiments.  Moreover,  being  more  flexible  and 
more  pervasive,  it  can  search  out  and  clean  up  chinks  or 
crannies  into  which  law  may  not  penetrate,  and  withal 
creates  less  dust  and  commotion.  To  use  a  homely  analogy, 
public  opinion  is  a  vacuum  cleaner,  law  a  coarse  broom. 
While  it  is  true  that  law  and  the  courts  frequently  take 

^  This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  mere  denunciation  or  muck-raking 
is  sound  criticism.  I  remember  hearing  John  A.  Hobson  say  once  that  only 
a  raising  of  the  general  level  of  intelligence,  i.e.,  creating  potential  sound 
opinion,  can  act  as  an  antidote  to  scare-heads  and  the  over-dramatization 
of  evils  in  the  movement  for  progress. 


372  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

their  cue  from  popular  passion,  either  through  timid  ex- 
pediency or  through  misreading  it  as  sober  pubhc  opinion, 
it  is  even  truer  that  every  solid  lasting  advance  in  legal 
technique  is  answerable  to  matured  opinion  which  has  be- 
come more  or  less  generalized  and  organic  to  the  life  of  a 
social  group.  Other  institutions  also  feel  this  pressure 
of  genuine  opinion  if  they  are  not  wholly  ossified  and  ar- 
chaic —  the  economic  order,  for  example,  or  education ; 
and  to  a  lesser  degree  religion  and  the  family ;  but  only  in 
so  far  as  they  have  to  do  with  the  general  problems  of 
social  control  and  social  readjustment. 

A  third  problem  grows  out  of  the  second,  namely,  the 
limitations  and  difficulties  of  public  opinion.  Real  opinion 
is  valuable  if,  and  only  if,  it  proceeds  from  coherent  thought 
applied  to  a  problem.  But  right  there  lies  the  whole 
weakness  of  the  claim  that  public  opinion  is  the  Messiah 
who  shall  deliver  us  from  all  our  social  ills  and  inaugurate 
the  social  millennium.  Printing  and  education,  we  are 
told,  have  made  possible  real  public  opinion.  Improved 
transportation  for  men,  goods,  and  ideas  should  be  added. 
For  the  telegraph,  telephone,  and  railroad  give  a  marvelous 
flexibility  to  the  various  devices  for  generating  and  gen- 
eralizing public  sentiment.  But  the  mere  mechanics  of 
printing  or  transportation  could  never  produce  sane  or 
sound  public  opinion.  Professor  Dicey  says  it  is  guided 
far  less  by  the  force  of  argument  than  by  the  stress  of 
circumstances.^  Why?  Because  of  the  general  morass 
of  ignorance  from  which  so  few  have  yet  begun  to  emerge : 
can  a  nation  that  bases  its  political  life  upon  an  average 
sLxth  grade  elementary  school  education  expect  much 
sober,  matured  opinion?     Because  of  a  general  shirking 

^  Lectures  on  the  Relation  of  Law  and  Public  Opinion  in  England,  300.  Pre- 
cisely for  such  reasons  Ross  (Social  Control,  101-02)  contends  that,  strictly 
speaking,  public  opinion  is  non-progressive  and  has  in  itself  no  power  to  rise. 


PUBLIC  OPINION  373 

of  thought  and  an  easy  preference  for  the  emotional  line 
of  least  resistance.  Because  primal  instincts  cut  so  large 
a  figure  still  in  human  life  that  even  though  it  be  true 
that  thinking  is  an  instinct,  other  instincts  so  overlay  it 
that  the  reign  of  reason  is  still  only  a  dream.  Because 
man  learns  to  understand  himself  last  of  all  things  in  crea- 
tion. Because  of  abysmal  ignorance  of  the  real  nature  of 
society  and  social  processes. 

More  concretely,  public  opinion  is  limited  by  the  diffi- 
culty of  getting  at  facts  upon  which  to  base  judgment. 
The  increasing  complexity  of  social  life,  the  size  of  social 
groups,  the  bewildering  assortment  of  facts,  the  rapid 
development  of  highly  specialized  bodies  of  fact  and  tech- 
nique, threaten  to  outstrip  not  only  the  capacity  of  the 
individual  but  even  the  means  for  disseminating  either 
facts  or  opinions.  The  individual  has  only  a  limited  sur- 
plus of  time  and  energy  which  he  can  devote  to  the  luxury 
of  public  concern.  Likewise,  there  are  limits  to  his  powers 
of  interest,  attention,  imagination,  and  sympathy.  The 
Aristotles  and  Shakespeares  and  Comtes,  those  universal 
minds,  are  rare ;  even  they  might  well  be  staggered  by  the 
prospect  of  reducing  this  throbbing  confusion  to  some  show 
of  orderly  thought ;  and  there  is  so  far  no  agency  for  re- 
ducing this  "undigested  medley"  to  coherence.  More- 
over, agencies  exist  for  the  deliberate  purpose  of  distorting 
and  suppressing  facts. 

In  spite  of  these  odds  the  attempt  to  form  sound  opinion 
must  be  kept  up.  But  sound  policy  will  not  throw  upon 
such  opinion  burdens  it  cannot  bear.  A  pohtical  system 
wisely  framed,  says  Lowell,  will  refer  to  public  opinion 
those  questions  alone  on  which  such  an  opinion  can  be 
expected  reasonably  to  exist. ^  But  this  must  not  be 
wrested  to  mean  that  we  are  to  retreat  superciliously  or 

^  Public  Opinion  and  Popular  Government,  53. 


374  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

yield  with  too  easy  complacence  to  the  belief  that  because 
public  opinion  is  hard  to  get  therefore  it  is  beyond  getting. 
This  leads  to  our  final  problem,  therefore,  how  public  opin- 
ion may  be  created,  organized,  or  guided  for  a  society  pre- 
sumably capable  of  development. 

It  must  be  confessed  frankly  that  much  of  what  passes 
for  public  opinion  is  purely  adventitious  in  character.  If 
progress  means  mastery  instead  of  blind  drift,  every  factor 
in  it  must  so  far  as  possible  be  purged  of  its  haphazard 
elements.  Above  all  is  this  true  of  opinion  if  progress  is 
a  matter  of  the  illuminated  will ;  for  will  does  not  work 
in  vacuo:  it  demands  reasonable  assurance,  judgment,  or 
opinions  sound  enough  and  strong  enough  to  discharge 
action.  Pragmatically  the  great  question  is  not  how  to 
ascertain  the  exact  shade  of  the  popular  will,  but  rather  how 
to  ascertain  what  the  popular  will  ought  to  be.  This  is  the 
distinction  between  time  serving  and  constructive  leadership. 

In  the  last  analysis  it  is  evident  that  the  popular  will  or 
public  opinion  can  only  be  what  it  ought  to  be  when  it  is 
based  on  absolute  scientific  fact  and  the  laws  of  the  cosmos. 
But  these  treasures  do  not  come  to  us  each  by  direct  revela- 
tion ;  they  are  communicated  in  earthen  vessels,  by  human 
approximations  to  absolute  truth.  We  can  do  no  other, 
therefore,  than  make  the  best  of  what  agencies  now  exist 
for  getting  at  and  spreading  truth.  Of  these  the  first  is 
scientific  research,  unmotivated  by  creed  or  party.  Next, 
the  machinery  of  dissemination,  particularly  education  and 
the  press. 

These  requisites  make  certain  assumptions :  First,  a 
considerable  body  competent  to  form  an  opinion.  Second, 
a  selected  group  —  not  necessarily  a  formal  aristocracy, 
perhaps  rather  Ross'  ''ascendancy  of  the  wise"  — with  the 
energy,  the  courage,  and  the  probity  which  will  command 
a  hearing  from  open  minds.     Such  a  group  usually  must 


PUBLIC  OPINION  375 

have  some  more  or  less  coherent  form  of  organization  — 
club,  political  party,  commercial  body,  reform  league,  or 
other  institutionalized  form  ^  —  to  assure  itself  of  that 
continuity  of  appeal  which  stupid  minds  demand.  It  is 
true  enough,  as  the  apologists  for  aristocracy  insist,  that 
what  seems  to  be  the  opinion  of  the  many  is  generally  de- 
pendent upon  the  influence  of  the  few.  This  is  evident  in 
any  country  that  is  sharply  stratified  into  classes.  But 
there  you  scarcely  have  opinion :  you  have  rather  the 
accepted  dogma  pronounced  by  your  pohtical  or  class 
leader.  The  best  you  can  do  is  to  hope  they  have  received 
revelations  or  thought  their  way  through  to  a  reasonable 
opinion.  But  in  a  democracy,  while,  as  Mr.  Mallock  holds, 
the  few  are  absolutely  essential,^  it  is  questionable  if  such 
a  situation  is  really  more  than  democratic  in  shadow.  If 
it  is  true  that  the  real  democratic  leader  does  not  obey 
the  people,  but  "regards  himself  as  one  of  the  people  with 
the  democratic  privilege  of  having  a  mind  of  his  own," 
it  is  all  the  more  true  that  the  citizen  of  a  democracy  must 
refuse  to  obey  his  leaders,  the  Few,  the  self-constituted 
Elite ;  he  must  be  led,  persuaded,  coaxed,  even  coerced, 
yea,  beaten  with  many  stripes,  into  the  habit  of  having  a 
mind  of  his  own.  The  function  of  an  intellectual  elite  is  not 
to  impose  its  opinions  upon  the  many,  but  rather  to  clear 
away  the  conditions  which  hinder  the  many  from  arriving 
at  their  own.  In  other  words,  the  Few  can  serve  the  Many 
and  themselves  best  by  seeing  that  the  agencies  for  creating 
sound  opinion  are  free  and  unsubsidized.  To  be  specific, 
I  mean  an  honest  press  and  a  system  of  education  which 
will  develop  critical  judgment. 

^  These  organizations  are  to  be  sought  less  and  less  in  public,  political 
bodies  like  legislatures  or  parties,  and  increasingly  in  such  groups  as  the 
national  associations  of  teachers,  social  workers,  economists,  physical  sci- 
entists, business  men,  farmers,  or  labor  unionists. 

2  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  185-8. 


376  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

''Government  by  newspapers  is  government  by  dis- 
cussion," Bagehot's  ideal,  says  President  Hadley;  hence 
newspaper  men  should  feel  a  high  sense  of  public  responsi- 
bility. The  press,  rightly  conceived,  tends  to  destroy 
party  machines  by  making  an  open  and  direct  appeal  to 
the  people,  and  to  their  judgment  rather-  than  to  their 
petty  selfish  interests.  But  unfortunately  not  all  editors 
are  proof  against  the  temptations  to  win  popularity  through 
appealing  to  prejudices,  suppressing  and  distorting  news, 
organizing  emotion.^  We  could  neglect  their  "inspired" 
editorials  if  we  were  sure  they  did  not  also  "inspire" 
their  news.  For  public  opinion  seems  to  be  more  open 
to  the  facts  in  news  columns  than  to  even  the  most  care- 
fully reasoned  editorial.^  It  is  undeniable  that  the  average 
newspaper,  run  as  a  commercial  venture,  is  subject  to  the 
whims  of  its  proprietor,  to  the  exigencies  of  his  party,  and 
to  the  prejudices  of  his  advertisers,  rather  than  to  the 
high  call  of  spreading  truth.^  For  this  reason  voices  have 
been  raised  repeatedly  for  endowed  journals  which  would 
report  news  fairly  and  offer  honestly  written  comments  on 
all  sides  of  vital  public  questions.  Los  Angeles  tried  for 
two  years  the  not  altogether  unconvincing  experiment  of 
a  municipal  newspaper  designed  to  give  every  organized 
political  party  an  equal  opportunity  to  address  the  public. 
And  a  demand  is  growing  for  a  national  news  service 
similar,  so  far  as  its  lack  of  bias  goes,  to  the  crop  and  weather 
reports  now  issued.  What  the  outcome  will  be  nobody 
can  predict ;  but  it  is  evident  that  until  the  press,  through 
a  new  code  of  private  professional  ethics  or  pubhc  owner- 
ship or  censorship  or  competition  with  endowed  and  in- 

^  "The  Organization  of  Public  Opinion,"  North  American  Review,  Feb- 
ruary, 1915. 

2  Cf.  Foulke,  Natl.  Municipal  Rev.,  3  :  247  ff. 

^  See  the  discussions  in  Piibl.  Amer,  Social.  Assoc,  vol.  ix. 


PUBLIC  OPINION  377 

dependent  journals,  arrives  at  a  fuller  sense  of  its  duty  as 
a  disseminator  of  pertinent  facts,  public  opinion  must 
stumble  and  go  it  more  or  less  blind. 

There  is  left  but  one  other  hope.  If  public  opinion  — 
meaning  a  rational  view  of  social  contingencies  —  is  to 
be  transformed  into  prevision,  a  telic  program  of  advance, 
it  must  resort  to  a  profound  and  rigid  educational  disci- 
pline. Men  of  conservative  mind  conceive  that  the  college, 
and  particularly  the  ''cultural"  or  "liberal"  type  of  college, 
is  the  only  agency  capable  of  conferring  this  discipline. 
But  the  disciplined  mind  is  too  often  confounded  with  the 
conservative  mind,  and  the  institutions  of  higher  learning 
have  been  accused,  not  unjustly,  of  breeding  conservatism, 
just  as  the  elementary  schools  are  charged  with  mere 
transmitting  of  popular  mores.  The  explanation  of  these 
criticisms  hes,  evidently  enough,  in  the  fact  that  our  educa- 
tional institutions  have  not  yet  quite  disengaged  themselves 
from  an  aristocratic  and  medieval  regime  in  which  the 
emphasis  was  laid  upon  communicating  ready-made  opin- 
ions and  memorizing  bodies  of  selected  and  approved  facts. 
In  other  words,  our  schools  have  not  emerged  from  the 
shadows  of  a  time  when  the  world  and  all  its  social  organi- 
zation was  accepted  as  a  firmly  fixed  order  and  when  a 
man's  chief  duty  was  to  adjust  himself  to  that  order  with 
the  minimum  of  questioning.  But  now  that  we  have  a 
vision  of  a  world  in  the  making,  of  an  evolutionary  process 
in  which  we  are  active  agents,  of  a  social  order  which  we 
may  help  to  transform  into  something  better,  it  is  evident 
that  the  concept  of  educational  processes  must  correspond- 
ingly change.  While  granting  without  recrimination  that 
education  must  remain  an  agency  for  social  control,  I 
maintain  here  the  thesis  developed  elsewhere,^  that  social 
control  will  be  best  served  when  every  student  is  trained 
1  "The  College  Teacher's  Function,"  School  and  Society,  3  :  91-5. 


378  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

to  criticize,  to  evaluate,  to  solve  problems  for  himself; 
that  is,  to  develop  the  self-winding  capacity.  This  means 
the  ability  to  form  opinions  and  to  change  them  when  the 
evidence  warrants.  Your  school  must  deal  in  facts,  surely, 
but  even  more  in  how  to  utilize  them.  Thus  live  teachers 
are  absolutely  right  in  insisting  that  the  public  opinion 
any  democratic  country  most  needs  is  not  an  opinion 
shaped  by  positive  teaching  on  the  part  of  the  few  and 
bhndly  followed  by  the  many ;  and  that,  consequently, 
schools  and  colleges  should  not  try  to  teach  specific  opinions 
or  doctrines  as  matters  of  fact,  but  should  foster  and  cul- 
tivate thorough  habits  of  investigation  and  independent 
judicial  habits  of  mind.^  But  why  limit  it  to  the  college? 
There  is  no  reason  under  the  sun  why  the  same  pressure 
for  evoking  critical  judgment  should  not  be  apphed  in 
secondary  and  elementary  schools.  Not  every  youth 
will  respond,  of  course,  because  independent  thinking 
is  a  hard  and  thorny  way ;  but  enough,  a  saving 
remnant,  perhaps  a  hundred-fold  more  than  our  feeble 
faith  will  allow  us  to  dream,  will  stand  out  to  become 
the  foci  of  sound  opinion  upon  public  concerns  for  the 
public  welfare. 

Unless  and  until  our  educational  machinery  can  develop 
this  forward-reaching  type  of  mind,  sow  it  broadcast,  and 
make  it  vastly  more  intensive  and  discriminating  than 
ever  before,  I  can  see  little  to  hope  for  from  public  opinion 
as  such  in  the  struggle  for  social  advance.  But  if  curricula 
can  be  freighted  with  such  materials  that  youth  will  be 
constrained  to  think  in  community  terms,  and  if  educa- 
tional methods  can  be  focused  more  clearly  upon  evoking 
minds  capable  of  discriminating  social  values,  then  there 
is  every  reason  to  expect  that  instead  of  those  mere  random, 

^  Cf.  J.  W.  Jenks,  "The  Guidance  of  Public  Opinion,"  Am.  J.  Social.,  i : 
166-7. 


PUBLIC  OPINION  379 

vague,  worthless  prejudices  or  accepted  dogmas  which 
masquerade  now  as  public  opinion,  we  may  have  a  steady 
dependable  stream  of  clarified  thinking.  Even  if  this 
stream  of  opinion  fall  short  of  absolute  truth,  and  even  if 
it  will  not  float  a  dreadnought,  at  least  it  may  be  counted 
upon  to  carry  the  canoe  of  the  pioneer  as  he  paddles  off 
towards  the  larger  waters  of  the  unknown  future. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,   THE  ELITE 

It  is  no  mere  freak  of  fancy  or  personal  whim  that  puts 
down  the  heroistic  or  aristocratic  theory  of  progress  as 
a  corollary  to  the  section  on  public  opinion.  For  in  the 
creation  of  public  opinion,  as  we  have  seen,  individuals  or 
select  groups  were  necessary  as  the  starting  points  of  agita- 
tion. Heroes,  great  men,  aristocracies  are  the  recognized 
centers  of  imitation.  They  are  unmistakably  both  agents 
and  product  of  social  differentiation.  Whether  they  are 
likewise  active  agents  in  social  progress  is  a  problem  much 
harder  to  resolve. 

We  are  familiar  enough  with  the  older  philosophy  of 
history  and  its  naive  hero  worship.  We  recall  that  to 
Bossuet  the  mainspring  of  progress  was  the  will  of  princes 
stimulated  by  the  divine  Providence.  Carlyle's  tribute  to 
his  heroes  is  scarcely  less  naive,  and  much  noisier.  Emerson 
begins  his  essay  on  Uses  of  Great  Men  with,  "  It  is  natural  to 
believe  in  great  men."  He  goes  on  to  say  that  the  search 
after  the  great  is  the  dream  of  youth,  and  the  most  serious 
occupation  of  manhood ;  that  our  religion  is  the  love  and 
cherishing  of  these  patrons.  ''Every  ship  that  comes  to 
America  got  its  chart  from  Columbus.  Every  novel  is  a 
debtor  to  Homer."  Yet  Emerson  is  a  very  rationalistic 
worshiper  of  the  great.  He  was  not  befuddled  with  aristoc- 
racies. He  saw  great  men,  and  looking  deeper  he  saw  the 
great  man  in  every  man.  His  real  text  is  not  "There  are 
great  men;"  but  "as  to  what  we  call  the  masses,  and 

380 


GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,  THE  fiLITE  381 

common  men,  there  are  no  common  men.  All  men  are  at 
last  of  a  size  :  and  true  art  is  only  possible  on  the  conviction 
that  every  talent  has  its  apotheosis  somewhere." 

Saint  Simon  and  Comte  (in  his  later  Hfe)  beheved  so 
strongly  in  the  great  man  that  they  proposed  to  reorganize 
society  on  the  hieratic  principle  of  a  nucleus  of  geniuses, 
bankers,  or  philosophers,  who  should  think  and  formulate 
programs  for  Leviathan.  But  most  sociologists  and  the 
masses  as  well  have  laughed  to  scorn  any  such  specialized 
body  of  patres  conscripti;  they  have  realized  the  dangers 
and  absurdities  into  which  a  body  of  pure  scientists  or  gray- 
whiskered  bankers  would  plunge  us  in  a  month.  Aristotle 
pointed  out  similar  defects  in  Plato's  scheme  for  a  perma- 
nent body  of  guardians. 

But  that  does  not  end  the  case  for  the  hero  and  the  elite. 
From  many  points  of  the  compass  and  from  many  fields 
have  come  arguments  in  their  behalf.     Theology  and  feudal- 
ism, as  was  natural,  contributed  their  apologetics.     Science, 
and  especially  pseudo-science,  have  added  their  quota.     A 
good  many  of  the  arguments  spring  from  an  interpretation 
of  natural  selection  or  survival  of  the  fittest  and  leap  beyond 
the  pale  horizon  of  mere  class  privilege  into  the  blue  infinity 
of  the  Superman  whose    untrammeled  will  is  the  law  of 
life.     Thus,   according  to  Nietzsche,   society  is   tolerated 
not  for  its  own  sake,  but  only  as  a  foundation  or  scaffolding 
by  means  of  which  a  select  class  of  beings  may  be  able  to 
elevate  themselves  to  their  higher  duties  and  in  general  to 
a  higher  existence.     Great  men  are,  therefore,  beyond  law. 
They  are,  as  IVlallock  observes,  "the  ultimate  fixers  of  their 
own  price,  .  .  .  the  masters  of  the  situation,  because  no 
one  can  tell  that  they  have  exceptional  powers  till  they 
choose  to  show  them  ; "  they  cannot  be  coerced ;  they  must 
be  induced,  coaxed  by  a  reward,  an  exceptional  reward  — • 
wealth,  domination,  power,  social  distinction  —  which  com- 


382  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

pounds  their  own  unlikeness  to  the  common  herd.  They 
are  great  because  they  are  successful  and  efficient.^  Be- 
cause they  can  command  great  prizes  as  the  reward  of  this 
superior  abihty  they  must  be  the  cause  of  all  progress. 

On  philosophical  grounds,  William  James  argued  that 
social  changes  are  in  the  main  due  directly  or  indirectly 
to  the  acts  or  examples  of  men  of  genius  who  were  so  well 
adapted  to  the  receptivities  of  their  time  or  whose  accidental 
position  of  authority  was  so  critical  that  they  became  fer- 
ments, initiators,  setters  of  fashion,  or  centers  of  corruption 
and  destroyers.  Rejecting  scientific  determinism,  he  sees  in 
the  great  man  a  happy  variation  :  as  great  ideas  pop  sponta- 
neously out  of  the  mind,  so  great  men  emerge  spontaneously 
from  the  mass.    Social  change  is  therefore  largely  fortuitous.^ 

Equally  positive  is  De  MoHnari,  the  economist.  "There 
are,"  he  claims,  "among  men  as  among  the  other  animals, 
superior  varieties  and  individuals  belonging  to  the  elite. 
It  is  to  this  aristocracy,  capable  of  observing,  discovering, 
and  inventing,  that  we  owe  the  progress  which  has  per- 
mitted the  human  species  to  lift  itself  little  by  little  above 
other  animal  species.  Thanks  to  it,  the  frontier  of  primi- 
tive ages  has  been  overleaped."  ^     Likewise  Le  Bon  : 

"History  demonstrates  that  it  is  to  this  small  ehte  that 
we  owe  all  the  progress  so  far  accomplished.  .  .  .  The 
inventors  of  genius  hasten  the  march  of  civilization.  The 
fanatics  and  the  deluded  create  history."  ^ 

*  W.  H.  Mallock,  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  276  ff. ;    116  ff. ;   271,  etc. 

2  "  Great  Men  and  Their  Environment,"  in  The  WiV  to  Believe,  pp.  216-54. 
Lehmann,  the  psychologist,  goes  so  far  in  his  worship  of  the  great  as  to  say 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  typical  process  or  law  in  history.  All  is 
individual  genius  and  spontaneity  {Zlsjt.  f.  Kulturgcschichte,  i,  245  ff.). 

^  L'evolution  economique  du  xix^  siecle,  443. 

*  L'evolution  psychologiquc  des  peuplcs,  2d  ed.,  Bk.  IV,  chap.  3.  Cf.  F.  Gal- 
ton,  Hereditary  Genius,  rev.  Amer.  ed.,  p.  343.  L.  F.  Ward  also  maintained 
repeatedly  that  only  a  few  elements  in  a  mass  really  contribute  anything 
to  human  progress :   see  his  Dynamic  Sociology,  ii :  12,  72,  175,  etc. 


GREAT  MEN,   HEROES,   THE  £LITE  383 

Mr.  F.  A.  Woods  has  made  several  brilliant  attempts  in 
his  studies  of  monarchs  to  connect  the  ruling  elite  with 
superior  stocks  and  also  to  associate  superior  rulers  with 
superior  periods  of  human  history.  In  his  Influence  of 
Monarchs  he  concludes  that  in  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  cases 
examined  superior  rulers  are  associated  with  superior  or 
indifferent  periods ;  in  ten  per  cent,  the  reverse  was  true. 
But  as  his  critics  were  quick  to  point  out,  he  fails  to  take  • 
into  account  that  the  character  of  an  historical  period  isi^'^ 
not  referable  merely  to  individual  or  social  forces  actiaa 
wholly  within  the  period  itself,  but  is  fashioned  largel}! 
by  the  antecedent  periods.  Comte,  Spencer,  Sumner; 
Le  Bon  and  others  have  made  this  fact  so  obvious  that  it  is 
a  sociological  commonplace.  Moreover,  the  exceptional 
individual,  even  the  monarch,  may  also  be  formed  largely 
by  influences  of  his  time ;  at  least,  he  is  not  to  be  explained 
wholly  in  terms  of  physical  and  mental  inheritance. 
Superior  indhziduals  com^  from  superior  opportunity  no      / 

less  than  from  SUpprin]-  talpnfc;  I 

Renan  interjected  elements  into  his  phrasing  of  this 
same  theory  which  make  him  appear  as  the  apologist  of  rich 
oligarchies  capable  of  infinite  condescension  and  patronage. 
For  him  progress  presupposes  an  oligarchy  heaped  up  with 
every  good  thing,  enjoying  leisure  which  will  permit  it  to 
cultivate  science  and  art  while  other  men  must  work  in 
obscurity,  ignorance,  and  poverty.  Mr.  W.  H.  Mallock, 
while  not  sharing  exactly  these  epicurean  views,  holds  that  ^ 
an  aristocracy  of,_wealth  is  _thg_  natural  aristocracy  of 
virtue  and  fitness.  ' 

""The  same  thought  is  garnished  with  a  repellent  dose 
of^snobberv  bv  M.  Paul  Bour^et  in  a  reactionary  essay  on 
the  school  situation  in  France.  "A  people  must  have 
organs  of  acquisition  and  organs  of  expenditure,"  he  coolly 
assumes.     It  must  have  "families  for  the  amassing  of  re- 


384  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

serves  of  vitality  and  families  where  these  accumulated 
reserves  are  consumed."  This  might  pass  for  the  superficial 
but  rather  harmless  sputterings  of  a  disillusioned  cleric. 
But  listen : 

"To  desire  that  every  member  of  a  group  should  have  the 
same  culture  or  even  an  analogous  culture  is  to  squander, 
to  dry  up  utterly  the  latent  reserves  of  the  future.  Dis- 
tinct castes  with  barriers  locked  but  not  water-tight  so 
that  movement  in  and  out  of  the  aristocracy  may  be 
measured  yet  sure,  and  middle  classes  perpetually  ennobled 
by  their  first  born,  and  noble  classes  degraded  in  their 
younger  sons  ;  such  is  the  arrangement  which  history  shows 
us  as  the  most  propitious  for  a  just  equilibrium  in  society."  ^ 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  catch  just  what  M.  Bourget  means  to 
convey ;  but  if  I  do  I  am  sure  the  history  and  sociology 
from  which  he  draws  his  conclusions  are  equally  the  product 
of  M.  Bourget's  facile  psychosis. 

Frederick  Le  Play,  in  reacting  against  the  French 
Revolution  and  in  opposing  De  Tocqueville's  idea  of  the 
necessity  and  inevitableness  of  democracy,  allied  himself 
with  the  heroists.  He  clung  to  the  hope  that  the  example 
of  a  few  patriarchal  aristocratic  families  would  save  a  deca- 
dent world  from  destruction.^ 

To  Professor  Sumner  the  aristocracy  not  only  holds  in 
itself  the  radical  elements  which  leaven  the  conservative 
masses  imbedded  in  static  mores,  but  also  saves  society 
from  a  state  of  equality  which  is  no  less  than  a  state  of 
nature. 

"It  is  the  classes  who  produce  variation  ;  it  is  the  masses 
who  carry  forward  the  traditional  mores.  .  .  .  Masses  of 
men  who  are  approximately  equal  are  in  time  exterminated 
or  enslaved."  ^ 

^  Sociologie  et  Litter atiire,  131. 

2  Les  ouvriers  europeens,  e.g.  vol.  vi,  pp.  548  ff.  Cf.  Sorel,  Les  illusions 
du  progres,  chap.  v.  ^  folkways,  pp.  47-9. 


GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,  THE  fiLITE  385 

According  to  this  theory  the  masses  are  conservers  rather 
than  creators,  judges  rather  than  instigators.  Hence 
the  fear  expressed  by  Sumner,  and  shared  by  many  other 
LndividuaHsts,  of  the  influence  of  popular  agitation  which 
suggests  to  the  mob  its  powers  and  especially  its  initiative 
and  creative  functions. 

A  somewhat  grudging  tribute  to  the  despot  or  ruling 
class  is  wrung  from  Professor  Carver.  They  have  served 
progress,  he  admits,  by  storing  up  human  energy,  by  arrest- 
ing the  natural  process  of  dissipating  energy.  They  have,  \ 
in  other  words,  achieved  capital  and  in  so  doing  have  | 
enforced  disciphne,  the  habit  of  thrift  and  prudence  — 
costly  discipline,  brutal  and  oppressive,  but  discipline 
nevertheless.^ 

Finally,  we  have  to  reckon  with  that  theory  of  genius, 
particularly  artistic  genius,  which  sees  in  the  artist  a  Thing- 
apart,  a  special  creation,  differing  wholly  in  quaHty,  quan- 
tity, and  function  from  the  common  run  of  men.  Mr. 
Arthur  Symons  may  be  taken  as  a  distinctive  protagonist 
of  this  theory.  Speaking  with  Paul  Verlaine  in  mind,  he 
declares : 

"The  artist,  it  cannot  be  too  clearly  understood,  has  no 
more  part  in  society  than  a  monk  in  domestic  life :  he 
cannot  be  judged  by  its  rules,  he  can  be  neither  praised 
nor  blamed  for  his  acceptance  or  rejection  of  its  conventions. 
Social  rules  are  made  by  normal  people  for  normal  people,  S 
and  the  man  of  genius  is  fundamentally  abnormal.  It  is 
the  poet  against  society,  society  against  the  poet,  a  direct 
antagonism."  ^ 

Here  the  critic  forgets  the  ordinary  norms  of  common  sense 
and  science,  for  from  neither  experience  nor  science  can  we 
conclude  that  the  genius  is  a  special  creation ;  he  may  be  a 

^  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  chap,  vi;  Sociology  and  Social  Progress,  12-3. 
2  The  Symbolist  Movement,  81. 
2c 


386  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

curious  variety,  but  is  otherwise  no  more  a  special  creation 
than  is  an  elephant  or  a  banker.     Moreover,  he  allies 
himself  too  closely  for  comfort  with  Lombroso's  theory 
that  the  genius  is  a  degenerate  akin  to  the  criminal,  the 
/  insane,  the  epileptic.     The  genius  may  manifest  some  or  all 
f  of  these  stigmata,  but  in  so  far  as  he  does,  in  so  far  as  he  is 
'  abnormal,  he  cuts  the  hamstrings  of  his  own  power.     The 
genius  may  scorn  the  ways  and  rules  of  the  particular 
j  society  in  which  he  finds  himself,  and  may  write  or  paint 
I  for  some  future  society  or  for  the  noble  company  of  the 
I  elect  of  his  own  dreams,  but  the  inexorable  law  of  selection 
rules  him  out  if  he  departs  too  far  from  the  standards  of  his 
'  times.     "Art,  my  children,"  said  Paul  Verlaine  himself, 
"is  to  be  absolutely  oneself."     This  is  true;    art  must  be 
sincere ;  but  the  artist  must  realize  who  and  what  he  really 
is;    he  must  pay  his  just  tribute  to  his  times  and  grasp 
the  inevitable  fact  that  he  is  part  and  parcel  of  his  fellows, 
made  of  the  same  clay,  the  same  sentiments,  the  same  sub- 
stantial interests. 

There  is  no  gainsaying  that  the  masses  need  great  men. 
The  demand  for  leadership  is  instinctive;  and  the  more 
complex  the  social  order  becomes,  the  more  imperative  the 
demand.  But  it  is  even  more  obvious  that  great  men  need 
great  masses.  It  is  true  that  "where  there  is  no  vision 
the  people  perish" ;  but  far  from  true  that  a  people  is  in- 
sured against  destruction  by  a  blind  trust  in  the  eyes  of 
its  great.  Without  the  masses  to  nourish  and  preserve 
them,  the  selected  great  would  be  selected  to  speedy 
extinction,  and  the  good  they  did  would  surely  be  interred 
with  their  bones.  Just  as  granaries,  libraries,  and  reservoirs 
are  mankind's  storehouses  against  the  vicissitudes  of  life, 
so  are  the  educated  masses  the  reservoirs  of  strength,  health, 
and  genius  to  succeeding  ages.  Progress  is  only  possible 
when  along  with  individual  power  of  initiating  changes  there 


GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,  THE  fiLITE  387 

exists  a  social  aggregate  capable  of  appreciating  and  con- 
serving them.  Civilization  requires  the  constant  refresh- 
ing which  comes  from  the  innovator ;  but  in  the  long  run  it 
must  depend  even  more  upon  the  accumulation  and  trans- 
mission of  such  innovations.^ 

Perhaps,  after  all,  the  great  man  is  even  more  result 
than  cause.  In  their  sturdy  reaction  against  the  earlier 
unscientific  and  more  or  less  sentimental  philosophy  of 
history,  many  social  theorists  of  the  nineteenth  century 
tended  to  exalt  mechanical  masses  and  forces  and  to  depre- 
ciate the  innovating  individual.     Thus  Comte  held  that 

"  the  chief  progress  of  each  period,  and  even  of  each 
generation,  was  a  necessary  result  of  the  immediately  pre- 
ceding state ;  so  that  the  men  of  genius,  to  whom  such  pro- 
gression has  been  too  exclusively  attributed,  are  essentially 
only  the  proper  organs  of  a  predetermined  movement, 
which  would,  in  their  absence,  have  found  other  issues. 
.  .  .  The  history  of  the  sciences  settles  the  question  of  the 
close  dependence  of  even  the  most  eminent  genius  on  the 
contemporary  state  of  the  human  mind."  ^ 

The  economic  determinists,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
were  ruthless  in  their  treatment  of  the  hero.  Peter  Struve, 
the  great  Russian  Marxist,  declared  that  the  exceptional 
individual  may  be  quite  disregarded  as  a  factor  in  social 
evolution,  since  he  is  but  the  product  of  the  social  group. 
"The  individual  is  but  a  form-expression  whose  content 
is  ascertained  by  investigating  the  social  group."  Apart 
from  his  group,  the  individual  is  nil ;  and  so  his  ideas, 
apart  from  the  group  facts,  are  of  no  importance  as  factors 
in  social  evolution.^ 

Scientific  theories  no  less  than  politics  make  strange 

^  Cf.  Deniker,  Races  of  Man,  125-6;   Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind,  i,  25. 
^Positive  Philosophy  (Martineau  transl.),  Bk.  VI,  chap.  3. 
'  Critical  Notes  on  the  Question  of  the  Economic  Development  of  Russia, 
ist  ed.  pp.  40,  etc.,  quoted  by  Hecker,  Russian  Sociology,  221. 


388  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

bedfellows.  Hence  we  need  not  be  unduly  surprised  to  find 
alongside  the  revolutionary  socialist  such  figures  as 
Macaulay  and  Herbert  Spencer.  Macaulay  in  his  essay  on 
Dryden  allowed  himself  to  declare  that  "it  is  the  age  that 
makes  the  man,  not  the  man  that  makes  the  age.  Great 
minds  do  indeed  react  upon  the  society  that  has  made  them 
what  they  are ;  but  they  only  pay  with  interest  what  they 
have  received.  ..."  Spencer  never  wrote  so  passionately 
as  when  attacking  the  great-man  or  biographical  inter- 
pretation of  history.  Recall  that  famous  passage  in  the 
Study  of  Sociology,^  which  ends : 

"And  if  you  wish  to  understand  these  phenomena  of 
social  evolution,  you  will  not  do  it  though  you  should  read 
yourself  blind  over  the  biographies  of  all  the  great  rulers 
on  record,  down  to  Frederick  the  Greedy  and  Napoleon 
the  Treacherous." 

Even  M.  Le  Bon,  who  is  not  averse  to  bold  statements 
and  paradoxes,  is  cautious  enough  to  qualify  his  thesis 
about  the  service  of  the  elite  by  admitting  that  if  you  study 
the  genesis  of  great  discoveries  and  inventions,  you  will 
always  find  that  they  are  born  of  a  long  series  of  preparatory 
efforts ;  the  final  invention  is  naught  but  a  crown  to  the 
rest  .2  This  accords  with  Vierkandt's  analysis  of  the  pre- 
{[equigjtes  to  any  cultural  innovation.  Three  conditions, 
he  says,  must  be  simultaneously  present.  First,  the  need 
or  demand  for  a  change.  Second,  a  degree  of  maturityin . 
the  conditions  of  culture.  Third,  and  third  only,  the  initia-  ^ 
tive  of  a  dominant  individual.^ 

How  shall  we  proceed  to  evaluate  these  two  opposing 
sets  of  theories?  From  what  has  been  said  it  is  evident 
that  there  is  a  world  of  difference  between  the  innovating 

1  pp.  32-7- 

2  L evolution  psychologiqtie  des  petiples,  2d  ed.,  Bk.  IV,  chap.  3. 
^  Zlsft.f.  Socialwissenschajt,  Hefte  4-5,  191 2. 


GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,  THE  £LITE  389 

individual  and  the  formal  hero  as  conceived  in  the  elder 
fairy-tale  type  of  history.  Biologic  and  social  variations 
are  inevitable,  since  nature  never  exactly  repeats  herself 
and  living  beings  are  not  mere  automatons ;  and  the  social 
process  includes  both  invention  and  imitation.  The  innova- 
tor is  he  whose  ideas  have  a  certain  survival  value  to  which  | 
even  his  own  generation  is  not  impervious.  The  tragedy 
of  genius  unrecognized  or  pseudo-genius  comes  not  from  the 
intrinsic  merit  of  its  ideas,  but  from  the  lack  of  a  selective 
agency  so  discerning  as  to  seize  those  ideas  and  keep  them, 
so  to  speak,  in  safe  deposit,  until  future  generations  have 
reached  such  a  plane  that  the  splendid  new  coin  of  the  genius 
can  be  released  without  danger  of  disturbing  the  social/ 
equilibrium  by  cataclysmic  shock.  The  innovator  must  be 
reckoned  with  in  social  evolution,  but  without  the  tinsel 
and  ex  votos  which  belong  to  the  fabulous  Hero-God. 

Part  of  the  trouble  arises  no  doubt  from  that  obfuscation  . 
of  vision  which  presence  of  the  reputed  great  induces. 
Obedience  and  reverence  are  all  but,  if  not  altogether, 
instinctive ;  perception  is  distorted ;  memory  is  tricky ; 
fear  imposes  upon  the  will-to-believe  ideas  normally  in- 
credible. The  hero  emanates  behef :  that  is  part  of  his 
mana,  his  hypnotic  spell,  his  stock  in  trade.  The  prestige 
of  personal  presence  weaves  itself  a  tradition,  and  behold 
you  have  the  legend,  that  fog  in  which  mere  man  becomes 
demigod.  Moreover,  the  noisy  episode  or  the  man  of 
prestige  quickly  gets  the  reporter  and  a  more  or  less  perma- 
nent record,  regardless  of  the  intrinsic  importance  of  either 
man  or  event.  The  small  prosaic  day  by  day  events  perish 
in  oblivion  because  to  report  them  butters  no  parsnips. 
The  chronicler  or  early  biographer  is  the  greatest  enemy  of 
^  true  sor.if^il  <ir^pxlrp  That  is  why  mere  reputed  greatness 
I  cannot  be  taken  as  the  measure  of  a  man's  contribution  to 
!    human  welfare.     That  is  why  the  hero  may  stultify  instead 


\ 


390  THEORIES   OF   SOCI.\L   PROGRESS 

of  stimulate.  Mikhalovsky  makes  much  of  this  distinction 
in  his  striking  work  The  Hero  and  the  Mob.  A  hero,  he 
defines  to  be  "that  man  who  by  his  example  captivates  the 
mass  for  good  or  for  evil,  for  noble  or  for  degrading,  for 
rational  or  irrational  deeds."  The  great  man  may  seem  a 
demigod  from  one  point  of  view  and  an  insignificant  crea- 
ture from  another.  Occasions  give  men  their  relative 
evaluation  :  men  not  considered  great  in  their  own  genera- 
tion were  resurrected  as  great  by  a  succeeding  age.  Hence 
the  problem  lies  in  the  mechanics  of  the  relation  between  the 
mob  and  that  man  whom  the  mob  considers  a  great  man, 
and  not  in  some  objective  standard  of  greatness.  Therefore 
an  evil-doer,  an  idiot,  or  an  insane  man  may  be  as  important 
as  some  world-renowned  genius  so  long  as  the  mob  has 
followed  him,  has  subjected  itself  to  him,  imitated  and  wor- 
shiped him.  The  hero  is  important  only  so  far  as  he  can 
evoke  a  mass  movement.^ 

Three  things  at  least  are  clear.     First,  that  there  are    \ 
heroes  and  heroes.     Second,  that  we  have  no  sure  objective    '■^ 

11  test  for  heroism  or  greatness  in  terms  of  abiding  social  value. 

'  Greatness  is  largely  relative  and  a  matter  of  personal  judg- 
ment. If  anybody  can  ever  follow  up  Mr.  Woods'  clue, 
work  out  a  social  grading  or  marking  system,  and  apply 
it  to  the  world's  long  list  of  saints  and  heroes,  then  we  shall 
be  able  to  revise  this  remark.  Meanwhile  we  are  pretty 
sure  that  some  heroes  at  least  have  been  really  great  and 
have  done  yeoman  service  for  human  advance.  And  they 
have  done  this  because  they  were  like  a  wireless  telegraph 
station,  tuned  to  receive  the  waves  of  popular  thought  and 
to  interpret  them  in  definite  forms.  Hence  an  important 
social  function  of  great  men  results  from  their  having  become 
symbols,  summaries  of  popular  ideas,  just  as  concepts  help 
_us  through  a  maze  of  percepts  and  sensations.  They 
1  Works,  ii,  98,  100,  386,  etc.     Cited  by  Hecker,  Russian  Sociology,  136  ff. 


GREAT  MEN,   HEROES,   THE   £LITE  391 

become  minted  and  pass  easily  to  facilitate  the  business  of 

exchange.     That  is,  they  have  both  an  intrinsic  and  a  token 

value.     Third,  a  brief  conclusion  as  to  explaining  great  men.     ^ 

Weather  variations  and  social  variations,  I  suspect,  are  to 

be  accounted  for  in  much  the  same  way.     A  local  cyclone 

or  a  great  man  is  the  effect  of  causes  perhaps  remote  and 

subtle,  but  none  the  less  conceivable  and    to  a  certain 

extent  measurable.     That  we  can  produce  neither  at  will 

is  true  so  far  as  it  goes ;   but  since  we  are  able,  by  neglect 

and  stupidity,  to  breed  generations  of  weaklings,  it  is  not 

altogether  fatuous  to  suspect  that  a  larger  crop  of  truly  great 

souls  might  be  harvested  if  we  but  took  the  pains.     This  is 

...  ) 

what  we  meant  by  positive  eugenics.  ' 

We  must  revert  for  a  moment  to  the  problem  of  an  objec- 
tive test  for  greatness,  with  particular  reference  to  Mr.    A-u 
Mallock's   thesis  that    superior   abihty   and  high  income  V 
inherentjx  belong  together  by  a  sort  of  mystic  marriage.     I 
believe  his  argument  to  be  fallacious  because  it  rests  upon    ,  - 
at  least  four  serious  errors.     First,  the  assumption  that 
genius  is   extremely  rare.     He   accuses  the   reformers  of 
overestimating  the  quantity  of  latent  talent.     In  Chapter 
XVII  we  have  stated  the  other  side  of  the  case.     Second, 
the  assumption  that  genius  is  so  marked  that  equality  of 
education  Is  unnecessary  to  bring  it  out.     But  can  you 
ever  be  sure?     Bernard  Shaw  said  in  a  slashing  reply  to 
Mallock :    ''Every  generation  invents  great  men  at  whom 
posterity  laughs  when  some  accident  makes  it  aware  of 
them."     He  contends  that  it  is  less  superior  ability  than  | 
superior  status  or  humbug  that  brings  about  inflated  '  rent    ■ 
of  ability,'  and  shows  how  little  really  goes  to  ability.^     If 
we  follow  Mr.  Mallock  we  shall  find  him  suggesting  no  way 
(as  Plato  did)  of  electing  who  are  great  and  who  are  not, 
save  through  discovering  in  the  wealthy  the  natural  aristoc- 
^  Socialism  and  Superior  Brains,  12. 


^^^fxrr.t 


/ 


/*'. 


392  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

racy  of  ability.  In  other  words,  we  do  not  know  the  great 
until  they  tell  us  by  their  income  that  they  are  really  great. 
We  elect  them  after  the  fact.  Third,  the  claim  that  wealth 
is  the  only  motive  strong  enough  to  evoke  productive  genius. 
Fourth,  the  implication  that  the  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth  corresponds  roughly  to  fundamental  differences  in 
productive  capacity,  i.e.  in  contributions  to  progress.  But 
it  is  not  difficult  to  show,  as  many  able  thinkers  have  done,^ 
that  capitalists  have  invented  nothing,  organized  nothing, 
discovered  nothing.  Moreover,  ability,  as  Shaw  demon- 
strates, is  not  an  abstract  thing.  It  always  means  ability 
for  some  definite  feat  or  function.  A  man  is  fit  or  able  for 
certain  duties  under  a  given  set  of  conditions,  and  perhaps 
under  no  other.  Imagine  Plato  in  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange  or  Pierpont  Morgan  in  the  Oneida  Community. 
Napoleon  or  Bismarck  would  hardly  shine  in  Mr.  Carnegie's 
temple  of  peace  at  The  Hague.  Nor  would  Mr.  Carnegie 
appear  to  advantage  in  a  state  administered  by  Fabian 
Socialists.  These  men„ai:e^hl£;4n  their^own  ^culiar  cast 
of  society.  Change  the  social  contours  or  internal  arrange- 
ments and  they  are  ghastly  or  ludicrous  misfits.  We  may 
associate  the  possession  of  millions  with  the  gift  of  genius 
and  say  therefore  let  us  continue  so  beneficent  an  order. 
But  our  ergo  is  fallacious  unless  we  have  already  examined 
that  order  and  have  pronounced  its  exploitative  spirit 
beneficial  to  present  and  future  generations.^ 

Granting,   then,   that   leadership   of   real   ability  is   an 
absolute  and  fundamental  necessity,  both  because  some 

A  ^  E.g.,  Crozier,  History  of  Intellectual  Development,  vol.  iii,  chap.  vi. 

^  This  same  general  criticism  applies  to  Mr.  P.  E.  More,  who  rides  with 
Mr.  Mallock,  Erste  Klasse.  In  his  Aristocracy  and  Justice_he  assumes^tjj^ 
'  very  question  he  ought  to  prove,  viz. :  that  a  natural  aristocracy  based 
upon  native  mequality,  bulwarked  by  law  and  custom,  does  produce  in 
society  that  harmony  of  reason  and  feeling  which  he  calls  justice ;  that 
is,  which  at  once  satisfies  the  fine  reason  of  the  superior  and  does  not  out- 
rage the  feelings  of  the  inferior. 


GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,   THE  ELITE  393 

men  want  to  lead  and  more  want  to  be  led,  it  still  remains 
true  that  leaders  are  not  created  out  of  nothing.  They  are 
born  of  society ;  they  are  therefore  accountable  to  it. 
Men  make  their  leaders  as  .thej^_jnaJ^e_thei^^  :  poor 
enough  sometirnes.,,,^t  still  their  own.  For  this  reason 
it  is  futile  to  argue  that  leadership  can  be  had  only  on  its 
own  terms.  Men  will  submit  to  grievous  pangs  for  the 
privilege  of  showing  ofif ;  for  showing  off  is  an  imperious 
demand,  not  too  inquisitive  about  its  reward.  Hence  the  . 
demands  of  a  supposed  natural  aristocracy  of  ability  must  / 
always  be  qualified  and  subject  to  review.  Their  true 
worth  must  be  ascertained  by  searching  examination. 
Will  this  critical  attitude  inhibit  or  repress  genius?  Civil 
service  examinations  were  formerly  accused  of  recruiting 
only  the  mediocre ;  but  by  adapting  them  somewhat  it  is 
now  possible  to  secure  the  highest  talent  for  public  service. 
Snobbery  refuses  the  comparative  test,  but  real  ability 
welcomes  and  thrives  on  it. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
GREAT    MEN,    HEROES,    THE    ELITE    (Continued) 

The  problem  of  the  elite  in  the  service  of  progress  reduces 
finally  to  a  question  of  what  form  of  social  organization  is 
best  adapted  to  evoking  and  utilizing  superior  ability. 
Through  pure  democracy,  or  a  system  of  castes,  inherited 
or  definitely  drawn  classes  ?  Through  fostering  an  aristoc- 
racy or  the  middle  class?  Through  limiting  education  or 
universalizing  it?  Through  encouraging  study  of  the  old 
humanities  or  developing  new  ones? 

The  breeding  of  leaders  and  setting  them  apart  as  a  class 
has  always  been  an  attractive  ideal  to  the  Utopist.  But  the 
theory  is  fraught  with  difficulties  and  perils.  Selective 
breeding  is  not  only  arduous  but  dangerous.  Stocks  bred 
for  a  specific  quality  tend  to  peter  out.  Moreover,  in 
breeding  geniuses,  there  is  the  danger  of  a  type's  becoming 
more  and  more  out  of  joint  with  the  environment  in  which 
it  is  designed  to  function.  Remember  that  the  great  man 
is  only  great  as  he  \'ibrates  to  the  winds  of  his  age;  he 
must  be  both  in  and  of  it.  The  same  objections  hold  to  a 
certain  extent  of  specialists  and  classes  trained  for  certain 
definite  vocations.  The  specialist  is  always  limited  by  his 
preponderant  interest,  the  class  likewise.  The  diplomatic 
service  is  accused  of  weaving  webs  of  pohcy  remote  from 
concern  with  real  pubhc  good,  largely  because  diplomats 
are  recruited  from  aristocracy.  Mihtary  leaders  fall 
frequently  under  the  same  criticism. 

394 


GREAT   MEN,   HEROES,   THE   ELITE  395 

If  not  specialists,  then  a  ruling  class?  But  what  class? 
Was  Federici  right  in  concluding  that  progress  slackens  and 
disappears  whenever  public  power  is  concentrated  in  a 
single  class  or  institution,  because  it  requires  freedom  and 
variety  for  its  nourishment  ?  ^  The  proletariat  have  not 
yet  the  education  nor  grip  on  the  technique  of  rulership  to 
warrant  faith.  The  middle  classes  are  often  liabihties  rather 
than  assets  so  far  as  leadership  and  progress  are  concerned. 
They  need  leadership  and  guidance  rather  than  are  capable 
of  giving  it.  A  natural  aristocracy  of  some  sort  is  the  other 
alternative  ?  Let  us  see.  This  involves  the  whole  question 
of  social  classes.  Classes  are  inseparable  from  social  hfe : 
there  is  no  getting  around  it.  And  they  are  as  numerous 
as  our  common  interests  are  varied.  They  are  as  powerful 
and  effective  as  those  interests  are  intensive.  Their  func- 
tion and  their  persistence  vary  with  the  character  and 
militancy  of  human  needs.  The  bases  of  class  differentia- 
tion and  class  rule  lie  directly  in  race  collisions,  speciahzation 
of  occupation,  and  property  ;  indirectly  in  law,  custom,  and 
religion  as  favoring  and  maintaining  them. 

Classes  are  the  great  bogey  to  rampant  democracy. 
But  like  every  other  bogey,  they  lose  their  terrifying  aspect 
when  you  march  boldly  up  to  them.  Classes  and  class 
interests,  rightly  viewed,  are  neither  dangerous  nor  ab- 
normal.    They  are,  as  was  recently  pointed  out, 

"the  driving  forces  which  keep  pubUc  life  centered  upon 
essentials.  They  become  dangerous  to  a  nation  when  it 
denies  them,  thwarts  them,  and  represses  them  so  long  that 
they  burst  out  and  become  dominant.  Then  there  is  no 
limit  to  their  aggression  until  another  class  appears  with 
contrary  interests.  .  .  .  Social  life  has  nothing  whatever 
to  fear  from  group  interests  so  long  as  it  doesn't  try  to 
play  the  ostrich  in  regard  to  them."  ^ 

'  R.  Federici,  Les  lois  dti  progres,  ii,  186,  222. 
^  W.  Lippman,  A  Preface  to  Politics,  282-3. 


396  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS     . 

It  may  be  true,  as  Ross  maintains,  that  the  props  of 
class  rule  are  force,  superstition,  fraud,  pomp,  and  pre- 
scription ;  nevertheless,  from  the  point  of  view  of  specialized 
function  classes  have  been  serviceable  to  human  progress. 
From  the  medicine  men  and  priests  have  sprung  many  arts 
and  many  useful  educational  devices.  From  the  wealthy 
aristocracy  has  come  a  certain  patronage  of  learning  and 
the  arts.  Whether  some  other  distribution  of  wealth  and 
leisure  would  have  been  still  more  advantageous  to  art  and 
learning  it  is  now  too  late  to  say.  It  is  also  admitted  that 
in  those  ancient  communities  whose  social  organization 
was  based  predominantly  upon  castes  and  the  hereditary 
following  of  certain  trades  or  occupations,  education  served 
to  perpetuate  these  castes ;  for  it  was  usually  given  by  and 
within  the  particular  family  or  other  group  practicing  a 
given  calling.  The  most  striking  examples  are  of  course  the 
military  and  priestly  classes ;  for  example,  the  Brahmans 
in  India.  On  the  other  hand  no  society  ever  split  itself  up 
into  mutually  exclusive  classes  or  castes.  Classes  always 
cut  through  each  other;  they  are  never  water-tight. 
They  are  never  secure  from  the  intrusion  of  foreign  in- 
fluences ;  hence  they  are  always  in  danger  of  education 
and  disruption. 

The  chief  concern  of  social  polity  with  classes  is  to  pre- 
vent a  class  organization  from  acquiring  so  solid  a  structure 
that  it  will  persist  and  suck  up  energies  long  after  it  has 
ceased  to  perform  the  functions  which  originally  created  it. 
The  danger  is  all  the  more  insidious  in  that  an  ascendant 
class  colors  the  entire  moral  fabric,^  It  imbues  men  with  a; 
belief  in  the  essential  inequality  of  men,  not  in  degree  IJ'n 
alone,  but  in  kind  as  well.  This  belief  tends,  under  aristo- 
cratic rule,  to  harden  to  the  point  of  stifling  legitimate 

^  Cf .  in  general,  J.  S.  Mill,  On  Liberty,  chap,  i ;  Crozier,  Civilization  and  I 
Progress,  285  ff.  ,  / 


GREAT  MEN,   HEROES,   THE   fiLITE  397 

ambition  in  those  who  feel  the  stirrings  of  genius  yet  hardly 
dare  to  fiy  into  the  upper  air  with  wings  branded  as  lower 
class.  Thus  it  begets  servility  and  resignation  on  the  one 
hand  and  impudent  self-assumption  on  the  other.  The 
masses  come  to  be  regarded  more  as  tools,  chattels,  property, 
than  as  fellow  human  beings.  Moreover,  classes  once  in 
possession  of  advantage  or  power  never  without  compulsion 
let  go  of  them.  Individuals  in  private  may  forego  their 
interests  through  response  to  affection,  pity,  admiration,  or 
other  emotional  stimuli,  but  never  the  class.  Like  the 
corporation  or  the  German  state,  it  either  has  no  soul  or  a 
soul  so  unlike  ordinary  humanity's  as  to  be  untouched  by 
any  motive  save  self-interest.  This,  as  we  shall  see  in  a 
moment,  is  admirably  illustrated  by  the  universal  aristo- 
cratic opposition  to  popular  education  as  threatening  ruHng 
interests. 

I  said  in  an  earlier  chapter  that  education  is  one  of  the 
state's  handmaids.     But  should  I  not  have  said  rather  that 
education  is  one  of  its  parents  ?     Modern  state-building  is  in 
no  small  degree  an  educational  triumph.     Education  is  the 
minor,  perhaps  even  the  major  premise  to  the  concept, 
state.     This  is  peculiarly  true  if  we  regard  the  state  in  its 
governmental  aspect  as  simply  a  balance  struck  between 
conflicting  class-interests.     For  education  may  become  a 
tremendous  solvent  to  class  barriers.     "The  most  effective  , 
agent  in  keeping  classes  comparatively  open,"  says  Cooley, 
is  an  "  adequate  system  of  free  training  for  the  young,  tending        < 
to  make  all  careers  accessible  to  those  who  are  naturally  fit;,,  ^ 
for  them.     In  so  far  as  there  is  such  a  system  early  education       « 
\     becomes  a  process  of  selection  and  discipline  which  permits 
i      ability  to  serve  its  possessor  and  the  world  in  its  proper 
\    place;"  ^     that   is,    selection   and    recognition    quite   dis-  '^"^ 
regarding  class  lines. 

^  Social  Organization,  227. 


398  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

The  power  of  education  to  break  down  caste  walls  and 
to  open  up  classes  is  amply  demonstrated  by  the  disruption 
of  medieval  castes  and  guilds.  Of  course  their  downfall 
may  be  in  part  attributed  to  their  own  extravagance  and 
narrow  exclusiveness,  the  egoism  of  their  claims  and  preten- 
sions ;  partly,  also,  to  the  fall  of  feudalism  and  the  growing 
ideal  of  modern  nationalism  as  expressed  in  a  modern  cen- 
traUzed  state  ;  partly  to  the  dawning  of  modern  capitalism. 
Of  these  three  influences  the  latter  was  probably  most  im- 
portant:  and  it  was  notably  an  educational  movement. 
The  education  of  the  middle  class  traders  created  a  new 
powerful  interest  which  weakened  ancient  guild  and  feudal 
privileges.  The  Reformation  with  its  resurgence  of  Chris- 
tian idealism,  the  revival  of  the  study  of  Roman  law,  and  the 
new  ideals  of  humanitarianism  promulgated  by  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  century  rationalism  aided  in  this  break- 
down. Throughout,  new  ideas  accompanied  the  new  in- 
dustrial movement  and  gave  it  both  program  and  ammuni- 
tion. Between  the  end  of  the  middle  ages  and  the  nine- 
teenth century  a  whole  new  learned  class  was  created  by 
admitting  commoners  and  secular  officials  to  the  magical 
circle  hitherto  preempted  by  the  priesthood. 

Hence  side  by  side  with  that  legal  evolution  of  the 
workingman's  position  from  status  to  contract  went  the 
recognition  and  appreciation  of  individual  worth  and  service 
expressed  in  the  extension  of  means  and  privileges  of  educa- 
tion. These  of  course  carried  over  their  influence  into  the 
poKtical  and  economic  realms,  producing  at  least  the  form 
if  not  the  substance  of  democracy  in  politics  and  industry. 
Education  like  capital  is  cumulative  in  its  effects,  and  once 
permitted  even  to  a  limited  circle  beyond  the  old  privi- 
leged classes,  must  have  spread  in  all  directions  and  given 
that  sense  of  power,  right,  solidarity,  and  consciousness 
of   interests    which    forced    the    pohtical    and    economic 


GREAT  MEN,  HEROES,   THE  £LITE  399 

changes  implied  in  the  supplanting  of  a  position  of 
fixed  hereditary  status  by  one  of  nominal  free  con- 
tract and  achievement.  Education  here  must  be  taken 
to  include  the  new  natural  science  and  social  philosophy 
of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  and,  ante- 
dating them,  the  discovery  cf  ch^ap  paper  and  the  in- 
vention of  printing. 

Of  course  there  is  a  dark  side  to  this  process.     Mere 

intellectual  and  technical  instruction  carried  with  them  no 

moral  ballast  to  hold  down  the  crass  egoisms  which  a  new 

sense  of  power  brought  to  hitherto  disinherited  classes. 

Hence  the  laissez-faire,  survival-of-the-fittest  economic  and 

legal  anarchy  of  the  nineteenth  century.     Yet  this  very 

one-sidedness  and  anarchy  of  crude  force  called  out  counter 

forces  of  sympathy,  brotherhood,  and  philanthropy  to  carry 

yOn  the  work  of  true  educational  extension  in  nobler  terms. 

.    jjMost  of  the  exaggerations  of  egoism  and  class  selfishness 

i" .  <  might  have  been  avoided  if  education  had  followed  a  rational 

y  S  program,  if  the  means  had  existed  for  developing  and  regis- 

y^   tering  the  social  mind  (that  is,  a  conscious  unity  of  senti- 

i  (  ments  and  ideas),  instead  of  allowing  things  to  go  higgledy- 

J  *^  piggledy  on  the  haphazard  principle  of  merely  "muddling 

J>^;along." 

■^J'^  J  A  further  evidence  of  the  power  of  education  to  dissolve 
^  V  caste  may  be  found  in  the  hostile  attitude  of  castes  toward 
education.  A  church  that  limits  to  a  selected  clergy  the 
right  to  read  heretical  books  creates  caste  morals  and  class 
education.  John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  essay  On  Liberty  points 
out  that  the  Catholic  Church  has  made  this  distinction 
between  those  who  can  be  permitted  to  receive  its  doctrines 
on  conviction  and  those  who  must  accept  them  on  trust ; 
thus,  as  he  declares,  giving  to  the  elite  more  mental  culture, 
though  not  more  mental  freedom,  than  it  allows  to  the  mass. 
This  would  seem  to  be  borne  out  by  the  special  dispensation 


400  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

from  the  papal  bull  on  mcdernism  accorded  recently  to 
German  theological  professors. 

Other  castes  sometimes  join  with  the  religious  hierarchy 
in  common  resentment  against  popular  education.  In 
England,  over  a  century  ago,  Hannah  More  undertook 
what  would  now  perhaps  be  called  settlement  work  among 
the  poor  of  certain  towns  in  her  neighborhood,  notably 
Cheddar.     It  was  essentially  popular  education.     So  long 

/'       as  it  looked  like  the  good  old-fashioned  free-soup  philan- 
.   J>'  ■  thropy  all  went  well  enough.     For  free  soup  always  means 
f    \i.\  ac^ukscence  in  the  status  quo.     Free  soup  drowns  revolt. 
^^^    But  when  Miss  More's  movement  took  on  the  character  of 
»y,  ^.       an    educational    renascence,    then    the    powerful    scented 
^         danger,  and  her  travails  and  tribulations  began. 

"At  Wedmore  the  landlords  strongly  protested  against 
the  spread  of  culture,  fearing  loss  of  prestige  and  power. 
The  Dissenters  also  began  to  take  umbrage  in  various 
communities.  In  fact,  Miss  More  became  now  the  object 
of  fierce  invective  and  persecution  by  many  who  should 
have  been  the  first  to  support  her  philanthropic  efforts." 

A  recent  observer  finds  India  seething  in  a  similar  con- 
test between  the  protagonists  of  popular  education  and  a 
powerful  caste. 

"It  is  somewhat  disconcerting  to  an  observer  and  student 

^  \  Si     °^  Indian  affairs  to  find  that  it  is  from  the  Hindu  element 

_  \  ^     and  largely  from  the  Brahman  caste  that  the  murderers, 

seditious  writers  of  the  vernacular  press,  and  the  men  who 

^  V  I     shoot  down  the  English  officials  on  platforms  and  in  theaters 

'.^  \     are  drawn.    It  can  only  mean  that  the  great  Brahman  caste, 

^     which  for  centuries  have  been  the  social  and  pohtical  leaders 

r  X . .     o^  these  timid  and  ignorant  masses,  are  jealous  of  the  English 

v^l    .     authority.  .  .  .     Instead  of  aiding  in  all  efforts  to  improve 

sanitation,  in  all  efforts  to  protect  the  peasant  from  the 

money  lender,  in  all  schemes  for  irrigation  and  education, 

.  the  Brahman  is  the  leader  of  the  reactionary  party.     He 


p 


^.> 


'5jf> 


'^ 


GREAT   MEN,   HEROES,   THE   ELITE  401 

prefers,  apparently,  that  the  mass  of  the  people  should 
remain  ignorant  .  .  .  and  helpless,  as  his  position  is  magni- 
fied by  just  the  width  of  the  social  chasm  between  himself 
and  them."  ^ 

A  somewhat  belated  exponent  of  this  aristocratic  dislike 
of  equalizing  educational  opportunity  appears  in  Mr. 
Mallock.2  He  sees  in  it  some  few  possible  good  effects, 
but  many  more  bad.  Genius  of  a  lesser  kind  which  would 
else  be  lost  could  be  elicited  through  educational  aid  from 
the  state.  But  this  gain  in  the  sum  of  moderate  talent 
would  be  more  than  overborne  by  the  danger  of  rousing  in  / 
the  average  man  wants  which  he  cannot  satisfy  and  by  the  | 
mischief  of  stimulating  discontent,  not  in  average  men,  but 
in  men  who  are  really  exceptional,  yet  whose  exceptional 
gifts  are  ill-balanced  or  have  some  flaw  in  them  (bad  artists, 
medical  quacks,  socialist  agitators,  etc.!).  For  if  educa- 
tion sets  free  and  stimulates  sound  intellectual  powers, 
it  will  likewise  stimulate  intellects  that  are  not  sound, 
or  will  that  has  no  intellect  to  match,  and  will  generate 
a  desire  for  wealth  in  men  who  are  not  capable  of 
creating  it,  and  thus  will  merely  .produce  needless  misery 
and  mischief. 

The  covert  insult  in  all  such  apologetics  lies  in  the  assump- 
tion that  because  thinking  is  hard  it  is  therefore  impossible 
to  the  average  man.^  But  thought  is  not  the  possession 
of  any  one  class ;   and  certainly  not  the  predominant  mark 

^  Price  Collier,  The  West  in  the  East  from  an  American  Point  of  View, 
215-16. 

^Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  Bk.  IV,  chap.  3. 

^  Nobody  has  better  expressed  this  attitude  of  intellectual  snobbery  than 
Coventry  Patmore  in  his  Ode,  1867,  wherein  he  speaks  of  the  masses  of  men 
as 

"...  that  presumptuous  Sea 
Unlit  by  sun  or  moon,  yet  inly  bright 
With  lights  innumerable  that  give  no  light, 
Flames  of  corrupted  will  and  scorn  of  right 
Rejoicing  to  be  free.  .  .  ." 

2d 


402  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

of  organized  aristocracy.     Sound  thinking  is  always  limited 
to  the  somewhat  narrow  field  of  which  the  individual  is 
.    master.     Your  great  genius  —  legal,  religious,  inventive  — 
1 1  cuts  a  ridiculous  figure  when  he  tries  to  play  Sir  Oracle 
outside  his  specialty.     The  milHonaire  iron-master  or  auto- 
mobile maker  or  inventor  sometimes  loses  his  sense  of  fitness 
and  unwittingly  tells  the  world  of  his  own  ineptitude  through 
a  newspaper  interview,  just  as  the  hundred  German  pro- 
fessors  brought   down   contempt   for   the   cause   of    their 
fatherland  through  their  ridiculous  "Appeal  to  the  World." 
Thinking,  hke  any    other   natural    disposition,  can   be 
developed    or    inhibited.     For    development    it    requires 
^  specific   problems    and   leisure.     It  can   be    starved    and 
atrophied  into  desuetude  by  deliberate  repression.     This, 
as  we  have  seen,  is   the  danger  involved  in  any  aristo- 
cratic scheme  of  social  organization.      That  is  why    we 
resent  such  phrases  as  "  the  intellectual  classes,"  Mr.  More's 
"natural  aristocracy,"  or   "high  brow  versus  low  brow." 
I  am  not  averse,  however,  to  the  concept  of  democracy 
voiced  by  Mazzini  as  "the  progress  of  all  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  best  and  wisest,"  provided  we  are  possessed  of 
means  for  discovering  them,  and  provided  above  all  that 
those  best  and  wisest  devote  their  genius  to  the  service  of 
all.     We  are  sorely  in  need  of  "emancipation  from  the 
tyranny  of  the  average  man  in  things  of  the  mind";  but 
the  surest  way  of  delivering  ourselves  from  that  tyranny  is 
to  do  everything  possible  to  release  the  average  man  from 
'  his  own  bondage  to  prejudice  and  emotion ;    that  is,  to  so 
order  the  conditions  of  social  fife  that  citizenship  in  the 
intellectual  Hfe  shall  be  open  to  all.     To  pin  one's  faith  to 
some  quasi-organic  instinct  called  the  democratic  instinct, 
whose  function  is  "to  inform  the  community  both  of  its 
vital  needs  and  of  its  mortal  dangers,"  ^  is  fatuous  to  a 
^  Campbell,  Catholic  World,  98  :  721-31. 


GREAT   MEN,   HEROES,   THE   ELITE  403 

degree ;  it  is  to  set  sail  without  a  rudder.  Therefore 
awakened  men  will  have  to  light  to  keep  the  channels  of 
Hberal  critical  thought  open.  They  tend  to  gather  weeds 
and  rubbish.  Worse  yet,  timid  or  selfish  men  organize 
deliberately  to  choke  their  flow.  For,  as  Bertrand  Russell 
contends,  men  fear  thought  as  they  fear  nothing  else  on 
earth  —  more  than  ruin,  more  even  than  death. ^ 

If  the  privilege  of  high  thinking  always  carries  with  it 
a  sense  of  social  responsibility,  noblesse  oblige,  there  is  no 
danger  in  the  notion  of  classes  for  intellectual  leadership. 
But  we  recognize  both  in  theory  and  practice  that  the 
problem  of  problems  is  how  to  equilibrate  justly  the  elite 
and  the  masses  in  any  state.^  Perhaps  a  social  order  com- 
bining sociaHsm  and  a  Samurai  class,  of  which  Izoulet 
and  Wells  dream,  is  too  narrow  a  formula.  I  am  inclined  to 
state  the  case  in  more  general  terms.  With  Lavrov,  I 
believe  that  progress  in  terms  of  the  elite  is  possible  only 
when  "into  the  convictions  of  the  individual  in  a  developed 
minority  there  enters  the  consciousness  that  his  interests 
are  identical  with  the  interests  of  the  majority  in  the  name 
of  the  durability  of  the  social  order."  ^  Both  individual 
and  group  are  likely  to  develop  when  this  consciousness  of 
solidarity  is  persistent,  when  it  is  reenforced  by  imagination, 
and  when  it  is  rendered  effective  by  a  technique  of  service 
that  is  uncomplicated  by  self-complacency.  I  cannot  see, 
however,  that  this  finely  disciplined  imagination  can  be 
cultivated  by  Mr.  More's  method  of  a  sturdy  negation  of 
canting  humanitarianism  and  a  return  to  the  classics.^ 
That  is  rather  thin  spoon-food  for  nourishing  so  important 
a  function.     If  we  are  to  have  aristocracy  let  it  by  all 

^  Atlantic  Monthly,  117  :  757. 

2  Cf .  J.  Izoulet,  La  cite  moderne ;  H.  G.  Wells,  A  Modern  Utopia. 
^Historical  Letters,  336,  quoted  by  Hecker,  Russian  Sociology,  11 2-16. 
*  See  his  essay  on  "Natural  Aristocracy"  in  the  volume  already  noted. 


404  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

means  range  through  all  the  best  that  the  world  has  thought 
and  said ;  but  let  that  wisdom  and  culture  of  the  past  be 
interpreted  in  the  light  of  the  new  humanities  —  the  sciences 
of  social  life  —  and  be  made  not  an  end  in  itself  but  a  means 
towards  an  alteration  of  social  relations  which  will  lessen 
gross  social  inequalities  and  incidentally  the  burdens  of 
leadership. 

One  more  word  on  caste  snobbery.     Narrow  and  futile 
is  the  ignorant  opposition  of  many  of  our  modern  economic 
and  religious  over-lords  to  socialism.     Not  to  socialism  as 
a  pernicious  economic  or  philosophical  fallacy.     Not  to 
socialism  as  a  gospel  of  selfishness  and  crass  materialism. 
^       Not  to  socialism  as  the  theory  and  practice  of  class  struggles. 
■,^        But  to  socialism  as  a  leveler  of  classes.     A  wealthy  woman 
"        I  know  is   a   liberal   contributor   to   charities   but   hates 
socialism   as   children  hate  bedtime.     "I  don't  want   to 
abolish  classes.     I  want  to  maintain  them.     I  like  classes," 
:       she  petulantly  exclaims,  as  if  petulance  were  unanswerable 
»       argument.     Coming  from  the  rich  and  powerful  it  fre- 
V,    ■  quently  is  so  :  it  was  formerly  dangerous  not  to  laugh  at  a 
T  i  J^  King's  jokes  or  praise  my  lord's  mutton.     Perhaps  the 
5   '!^ij    surest  way  of  redeeming  us  from  caste  snobbery  would  be 
^    universal    compulsory    public    education    and    universal 
^    y  r>  vocational  training  up  to  the  age  of  eighteen,  with  com- 
pulsory community  service  either  military  or  civil  for,  say, 
a  three  year  period,  in  which  offices  and  leadership  should 

if   .     be  absolutely  open   to  merit.     Free  pubHc  forums,   free 
;  i    university  extension  teaching,  and  possibly  such  economic 
^  ^   reforms  as  restriction  of  incomes  and  inheritances  would 
aid  in  this  general  process  of  leveling-up. 

Such  reforms  would  not  abolish  classes.  But  no  sane 
person  dreams  of  abolishing  them,  any  more  than  he  would 
abolish  eyes,  ears,  and  nose  in  favor  of  one  general  sense 
of  touch  less  refined  than  these  specialized  forms.     Classes 


GREAT  MEN,   HEROES,   THE   fiLITE  405 

must  remain  so  long  as  variations  occur  in  men.  And  if 
those  variations  are  not  germinal  they  must  be  cultivated 
through  diversified  education.  This  means  that  classes 
based  on  specialized  fitness  must  be  one  of  the  aims  of 
social  polity,  with  the  sole  proviso  that  opportunity  be  so 
generalized  that  real  fitness  may  find  its  proper  class,  that 
gold  may  rise  to  the  level  of  gold  and  lead  drop  to  lead 
as  Plato  planned.  In  short,  social  classes  based  on  service 
may  be  trusted  to  aid  social  advance ;  classes  based  upon 
privilege  or  freaks  of  fortune  are  a  menace  and  a  drag- 
weight.  It  is  well  to  keep  in  mind,  however,  that  warlike 
and  religious  exploits  are  the  fields  of  distinction  from  which 
social  privileges  —  more  often  than  not,  perhaps,  without 
corresponding  social  contributions  —  have  been  garnered 
from  time  immemorial. 

To  summarize :  leadership  is  inevitably  written  into  the 
nature  of  man  as  he  now  exists ;  and  aristocracy  or  grades 
of  excellence  are  equally  inevitable.  But  leadership  and 
aristocracy  are  progressive  factors  only  in  so  far  as  they 
produce  more  than  they  cost :  just  to  pay  their  way  is  not 
enough.  Social  differentiation  into  classes  with  more  or 
less  fixed  status  has  served  in  the  past.  But  the  social 
wastes  through  inhibited  talent  and  productivity,  through 
exploitation  and  fostering  the  mores  of  servility  and  resig- 
nation, make  it  doubtful  whether  aristocracy  is  worth  the 
price.  The  only  upper  classes  a  progressive  civilization 
can  tolerate  are  men  and  women  of  superior  mental  ability 
who  at  the  same  time  have  social  vision,  and  a  sense  of 
social  solidarity. 

If,  moreover,  we  accept  the  wisdom  of  Emerson  and  of 
Ward,  there  is  a  measure  of  genius  and  therefore  the  legiti- 
mate claim  to  aristocracy  in  every  mother's  son  of  us. 
Our  social  poHcy  should  not,  however,  be  merely  the  child's 
game  of  *'You  are  as  good  as  I  am,"  or  "I  am  just  as  good 


/ 


4o6  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

I  as  you,"  but  rather  "We  are  all  members  of  a  magnificent 
I  aristocracy  whose  business  it  is  to  serve  and  not  to  rule." 
Such  a  social  policy  would  yield  us  an  educated  leadership 
marching  on  an  equal  plane  with  an  educated  body  of  the 
led.  Or,  better  still,  every  member  of  society  could  at  once 
be  both  leader  and  led.  This  is  the  vision  of  social  edu- 
cation. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 
LANGUAGE 

As  an  agent  of  human  development  language  far  outranks 
law.  It  shares  equal  honors  with  the  discovery  of  fire 
and  the  invention  of  tools  in  hauling  man  up  out  of  the 
abyss.  "All  that  man  possesses  more  than  the  brute 
is  so  intimately  bound  up  with  language  that  the  two  are 
hardly  separable  from  one  another."  ^  Language  is  chiefly 
significant  as  a  short-cut  in  social  heredity.  If  each  human 
being  had  to  begin  for  himself  the  career  of  education  and 
improvement,  all  the  energies  of  the  race  would  be  absorbed 
in  taking  over  and  over  again  the  first  halting  steps.  Lan- 
guage enables  each  generation  to  lay  up  securely  and  to 
hand  over  to  its  successors  its  own  collected  wisdom,  its 
stores  of  experience,  deduction,  and  invention,  so  that 
each  starts  from  the  point  which  its  predecessors  had 
reached,  and  every  individual  commences  his  career  as 
heir  to  the  gathered  wealth  of  an  immeasurable  past. 

Language  is  preeminently  the  social  bond.  At  least  it 
is  the  tool  by  which  social  bonds  are  forged.  It  is  the 
medium  through  which  sentiments  and  ideas  are  pooled 
to  form  community  feelings  and  opinions.  Since  society 
is  merely  our  mental  image  of  one  another,  and  language 
is  the  chief  means  of  communicating  those  images,  it  is 
evident  enough  why  the  science  of  society  must  treat  it 
with  the  profoundest  respect.  Language  is  the  chief 
means  by  which  group  character  is  impressed  upon   the 

^  Whitney,  Language  and  the  Study  of  Languages,  441. 

407 


4o8  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

individual.  It  is  therefore  the  agent  par  excellence  for 
securing  group  cohesion  and  the  strength  that  comes  from 
unity.  Federici  made  it  the  master  key  to  moral  progress, 
because  it  alone  rendered  possible  the  cooperation  of  many 
intelligences.^  Hence  the  significance  of  the  old  Hebrew 
myth  of  the  Tower  of  Babel.  The  "whole  earth  was  of 
one  language  and  of  one  speech.  .  .  .  And  the  Lord  said, 
Behold  the  people  is  one,  and  they  have  all  one  language ; 
and  this  they  begin  to  do ;  and  now  nothing  will  be  re- 
strained from  them,  which  they  have  imagined  to  do." 
{Gen.  xi,  i,  6).  To  break  down  this  powerful  union  the 
Lord  resorted  not  to  arms,  nor  did  he  invoke  the  destruc- 
tive powers  of  his  cosmos ;  he  simply  smote  the  people 
with  inability  to  understand  each  other's  speech. 

Whether  languages  sprang  originally  from  a  single  stock, 
or  whether  they  had  a  multiple  origin,  they  very  early 
diverged,  and  this  divergence  is  almost  inevitably  asso- 
ciated with  strife  or  misunderstandings.  "As  a  rule  the 
most  persistent  warfare  has  been  waged  between  tribes 
speaking  different  languages."  .  .  .  ^  On  the  other  hand, 
while  unity  of  language  is  no  absolute  guarantee  of  peace 
and  good  will,  it  facilitates  them ;  it  aids  in  the  composi- 
tion of  differences  and  paves  the  way  for  natural  alliances. 
Hence  religious  leaders  like  the  Bahai  teachers  and  scientists 
unite  in  trying  to  secure  a  world  language  as  the  means  of 
world  understandings  and  international  good  will.  Vol- 
apuk,  Esperanto,  and  other  artificial  tongues  are  merely 
expressions  of  an  indomitable  hope  for  the  parliament  of 
man.  And  the  ancient  maxim  that  a  man  has  as  many  souls 
as  he  has  languages  witnesses  the  striving  of  the  heart  of 
each  man  to  beat  in  unison  with  the  heart  of  the  world. 

To  prove  the  progress-value  of  language  need  we  go  so  far 
as  to  make  language  and  thought  identical,  as  Max  Miiller 

^  Lois  du  progres,  ii,  127.  ^  Morgan,  Ancient  Society,  111-12. 


LANGUAGE  409 

did?  He  once  gave  three  notable  lectures  before  the 
Royal  Institution  in  London  on  the  science  of  language. 
It  was  not  mere  perversity  that  led  him  to  name  the  series 
Three  Introductory  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Thought;  for 
in  the  preface  to  their  published  form  he  explicitly  states 
his  undaunted  conviction  of  the  identity  between  reason 
and  language :  "No  reason  without  language,  no  language 
without  reason."  ^  It  is  quite  possible  that  this  doughty 
philologist  somewhat  strained  the  truth.  But  whether 
we  can  posit  the  absolute  identity  of  clear  coherent  thought 
and  language,  we  know  at  any  rate  that  they  are  inevi- 
tably and  indissolubly  associated.  Whatever  makes  for  a 
broader  range  of  thought  makes  pari  passu  for  a  richer 
content  of  language,  and  vice  versa.  And  this  process  is 
cumulative.  It  involves,  of  course,  all  the  other  factors 
in  the  social  process,  climate,  industry,  religion,  race  con- 
tacts, war,  as  well  as  literature.  And  they  in  turn  are 
dependent  upon  language.  Apparently  the  most  difficult 
of  transitions  in  the  history  of  progress  —  the  transition 
from  its  middle  to  its  higher  stages,  from  barbarism  to 
civilization  —  was  due  chiefly  to  the  development  of  lan- 
guage. What,  asks  a  brilliant  historian,  is  the  cause  of  the 
higher  degree  of  intelligence  which  accompanies  advance- 
ment? 

"The  sole  reason  of  our  superiority  is  that  we  have  be- 
come richer  in  conceptions.  ...  It  is  due  to  words  and  to 
words  alone  that  man's  conceptions  have  increased,  not 
by  simple  accumulation,  but  by  multiplication.  .  .  .  Lan- 
guage has  conferred  on  man  the  power,  denied  to  other 
animals,  of  dominating,  disciplining,  and  directing  his 
mental  conceptions ;  and  the  internal  dominion  thus  gained 
he  has  extended  over  the  world  around  him."  ^ 

^  Cf.  Marett,  Anthropology,  130. 

^  E.  J.  Payne,  History  of  America,  ii,  98. 


41 0  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

The  assimilative  power  of  language  is  evidenced  by  the 
fact  that  the  possession  of  a  universal  language  helped 
enforce  the  unity  of  Catholic  Christianity  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  while  the  rise  of  popular  literature  in  many  vernac- 
ulars relaxed  and  finally  helped  destroy  that  unity. ^  Simi- 
lar evidence  appears  in  the  attempts,  brutal  and  not  yet 
successful,  of  Germany  to  force  her  language  upon  her 
slice  of  Poland,  upon  Alsace-Lorraine  and  Schleswig- 
Holstein ;  likewise  in  the  Russian  aggressions  upon 
Finland.  It  also  accounts  for  much  of  the  interminable 
turmoil  in  Austria-Hungary.  In  the  United  States 
teaching  English  to  the  immigrant  is  counted  more  than 
a  mere  means  of  protecting  him  against  fraud  and  accident. 
It  is  placed  as  the  easy  vestibule  by  which  he  may  enter 
into  full  Americanization.  Ever  since  the  days  of  Wyclif 
and  Tyndale,  the  teaching  of  the  English  Bible  has  molded 
not  only  English  speech  but  also  English  thought,  both  lit- 
erary and  political.  The  same  is  true  of  the  influence  of 
Buddhism  in  the  Orient. 

"Before  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  Buddhism  had 
indelibly  stamped  itself  on  the  language  as  well  as  the 
literature  of  Japan.  The  phraseology  of  the  Japanese 
people  was  influenced  by  the  Sutras  somewhat  as  our 
language  has  been  influenced  by  the  Bible."  ^ 

Whether  it  be  absolutely  true  or  not  that  metamorphism 
of  a  nation  may  be  accomplished  by  change  of  language, 
nationalities  apparently  tend  to  express  their  sentiment 
of  unity  in  resisting  attempts  to  force  new  languages  upon 
them.  One  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  M.  de  la  Grasserie's 
view  is  not  so  extreme  as  it  at  first  appears.  He  claims 
that  while  the  political  constitution,  habitat,  religious  and 

^  Cf.  Draper,  Conflict  between  Religion  and  Science,  281. 
^  Lewis,  Educational  Conquest  of  the  Far  East,  18;    Griffis,  Religions  of 
Japan, ^1^-14. 


LANGUAGE  41 1 

economic  interests  of  a  nation  are  not  to  be  ignored,  still 
its  language  is  a  nation's  most  potent  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic. Hence  real  assimilation  of  a  foreign  nation 
cannot  be  secured  simply  by  inducting  it  into  a  new  polit- 
ical order  and  a  new  economic  and  religious  process.  Some 
method  must  be  discovered  whereby  it  can  be  led  to  give 
up  its  own  language  with  all  its  own  peculiar  idioms.^  But, 
as  we  have  already  indicated,  this  method  must  be  per- 
suasive rather  than  coercive.  It  must  stimulate  free 
imitation  or  involve  economic  and  social  advantages. 
Universal,  compulsory,  free  public  education  under  a 
democratic  system  acts  with  perhaps  as  little  of  the  spirit 
of  coercion  as  can  be  expected.  Where  such  a  system 
is  coupled  with  a  philosophy  of  success,  and  acceptance 
of  the  dominant  language  helps  to  succeed,  the  process 
of  peaceful  assimilation  through  language  is  facilitated. 

John  Synge,  the  Irish  playwright,  left  a  vignette  from 
West  Kerry  which'  shows  more  concretely  than  a  volume  on 
the  history  of  language  the  selective  and  reducing  power  of  a 
dominant  language.  He  was  talking  one  day  with  a  West 
Kerry  peasant  about  the  Irish  language.     Said  the  man : 

"A  few  years  ago  they  were  all  for  stopping  it  off;  and 
when  I  was  a  boy  they  tied  a  gobban  into  my  mouth  for 
the  whole  afternoon  because  I  was  heard  speaking  Irish. 
Wasn't  that  great  cruelty?  And  now  I  hear  the  same 
busybodies  coming  around  and  telling  us  for  the  love  of 
God  to  speak  nothing  but  Irish.  I've  a  good  mind  to  tell 
them  to  go  to  hell.  There  was  a  priest  out  here  a  while 
since  who  was  telling  us  to  stay  always  where  we  are,  and 
to  speak  nothing  but  Irish;  but  I  suppose,  although  the 
priests  are  learned  men,  and  great  scholars,  they  don't 
understand  the  life  of  the  people  the  same  as  another  man 
would.     In  this  place  the  land  is  poor  —  you  can  see  that 

^  R.  de  la  Grasserie,  "Du  metamorphisme  d'une  nationalite  par  le 
langage,"  Rcviic  phUosophique,  September,  1913. 


412  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

for  yourself  —  and  the  people  have  little  else  to  live  on ; 
so  that  when  there  is  a  long  family,  one  son  will  stay  at 
home  and  keep  on  the  farm,  and  the  others  will  go  away 
because  they  must  go.  Then  when  they  once  pass  out  of 
the  Dingle  station  in  Tralee  they  won't  hear  a  word  of 
Irish,  or  meet  any  one  who'd  understand  it ;  so  what  good, 
I  ask  you,  is  a  man  who  hasn't  got  the  English,  and  plenty 
of  it?"i 

One  word  of  warning  to  those  who  might  conclude  that 
language  in  and  of  itself  must  by  some  mysterious  inner 
force  operate  as  a  ceaseless  impulse  to  improve.  A  language 
is  a  clumsy  thing  at  best,  "an  old  barbaric  engine  added 
to  and  altered,  patched  and  tinkered  into  some  sort  of  capa- 
bility." Languages  do  not  necessarily  progress.  They 
decay  and  die  like  any  other  human  product.  And  their 
decadence  or  death  is  bound  up  with  the  decay  and  death 
of  the  thought  and  the  very  existence  of  the  people  whom 
it  animates.  Moreover,  in  its  stage  of  lingering  decrepitude 
it  may  actually  prove  to  be  a  body  of  death  about  a  society 
struggling  to  go  on.  Any  archaic  language  like  Sanscrit 
or  Hebrew  or  Latin  may  become  the  merest  fetish,  and  in 
the  service  of  ecclesiasticism  may  check  the  progress  of 
free  thought  and  cover  up  meaningless  mysteries  and  down- 
right fraud.  When  the  symbols  of  real  religious  senti- 
ment degenerate  into  mere  magical  formulae  there  usually 
comes  a  religious  renascence  or  even  an  explosion  which 
weds  new  religious  concepts  to  less  archaic  terms.  The 
like  holds  true  for  secular  culture  and  education.  Only 
recently  has  China  begun  to  throw  off  the  sedulous  admira- 
tion of  her  hoary  classics.  And  the  Occident  was  not  much 
earlier  in  the  discovery  that  there  was  no  peculiar  virtue 
to  a  Latin  prayer  any  more  than  there  was  in  the  Hebrew 
Kabala.  Modern  democracy,  too,  is  not  so  easily  im- 
pressed with  mere  pompous  shows  of  arid  learning  in  dead 

^  Works,  vol.  iv,  p.  69. 


LANGUAGE  413 

tongues.  Possession  of  a  dead  language  was  at  one  time 
a  tribal  or  caste  mark,  altogether  on  all  fours  with  the 
possession  of  a  skin  tattooed  in  a  certain  pattern.  But 
language  to  serve  as  a  real  tool  for  progress  must  be  renewed 
every  day,  must  not  only  treasure  the  best  words  and 
thoughts  from  the  past,  but  must  reedit  them  with  every 
sunrise. 

Language  in  the  service  of  such  a  high  purpose  must 
be  daring  as  thought  must  be  daring.  The  purist  we  may 
tolerate  as  we  would  tolerate  the  man  who  insisted  on 
building  his  kitchen  fire  with  a  Papuan  fire  drill.  We 
must  treasure  dead  languages  as  we  treasure  paleolithic 
flint  hatchets  or  bits  of  Cretan  shards,  or  the  Code  of 
Hamurabai :  for  the  increase  of  our  effective  range  of 
sympathy  and  as  sources  of  our  knowledge  of  the  origins 
of  things.  But  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  they  are 
descriptive,  not  dynamic.  Language  to  be  progressive 
must  march  in  time  with  other  elements  in  the  social  pro- 
cess. To  be  assured  of  this  harmony,  sound  social  policy 
will  include  in  its  program  two  purposes.  It  will  foster 
distinguished,  forward-reaching  thought  and  noble  expres- 
sion ;  and  it  will  strive  to  generalize  them,  make  them 
modal,  by,  on  the  one  hand,  making  them  more  easily  ac- 
cessible ;  on  the  other,  by  cultivating  intelligences  and 
emotions  capable  of  appreciating  language  forms  and 
refining  them.  This  is  the  legitimate  field  of  public  edu- 
cation, of  moderate  priced  books,  of  elastic  libraries,  and 
perhaps  of  state  or  municipal  theaters  and  educational 
extension  centers.  The  further  bearings  of  this  subject 
will  appear  later  in  the  chapter  on  literature  and  the  arts. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 
RELIGION 


With  the  appearance  of  a  new  religious  idea,  a  new 
civilization  is  born,  says  a  folk-psychologist ;  religion  is 
the  only  factor  capable  of  acting  rapidly  upon  the  char- 
acter of  a  people ;  on  the  other  hand  nothing  is  so  destruc- 
tive as  the  dust  of  dead  gods.^  Here  we  have  the  service 
of  religion  to  human  evolution  in  a  nutshell.  It  appears 
as  both  constructive,  disciplinary,  progressive,  and  as  a 
destructij^Pj  hamppn'ng,  rptarHing-forrp       For  the  purposes 

of  our  discussion  it  makes  no  difference  whether  religion 
is  true  or  not.  Religifln^iy.  Religion  may  be  an  illu- 
sion ;  but  the  science  of  society  has  to  reckon  with  not 
only  facts  of  geography,  statistics  of  production,  rates  of 
population  increase,  but  also  with  every  human  folly,  de- 
lusion, and  craze.  The  personalities  in  religion  may  be 
odious  to  our  senses ;  its  gods  and  idols  may  be  hideous. 
The  devotee  may  curse  and  abuse  his  god.  A  two-and-a- 
half-y ear-old  child  of  my  acquaintance  has  an  ugly  two- 
faced  doll  which  she  calls  God  and  which  she  beats  roundly. 
Man  has  always  beaten  his  gods.  The  Italian  fisherman 
may  throw  overboard  his  image  of  the  Virgin  if  the  catch 
fails.  But  the  ignominy  and  ugliness  incidental  to  reli- 
gion do  not  warrant  its  exclusion  from  a  discussion  of  the 
elements   of   progress ;     indeed,    they   make    a   reckoning 

^  Le  Bon,  L' Evolution  psychologiqiie  des  peuples,  Bk.  IV,  chap.  ii. 

414 


RELIGION  415 

with  it  all  the  more  imperative.  Thejipshot  of  the  matter 
is  that  religion  is  a  social  product.  Call  it,  if  you  please, 
as  some  sociologists  do,  dealing  with  the  imaginary  environ- 
ment. Conceive  it,  if  you  choose,  to  have  arisen  from  faulty 
sense  perception,  self-delusion,  and  the  fear  of  ancestral 
ghosts.  Account  for  it  as  you  will,  it  has  for  untold 
ages  been  an  undeniable  and  dominating  force  in  human 
history. 

"At  all  times,  in  all  countries,  religion  has  assumed  the 
glory  of  having   civilized  the  people,"   declared   Guizot. 
Whether  the  fact  of  its  domination  entitles  religion  to  as- 
sume so  much,  it  is  our  problem  to  analyze.     In  order  to 
anticipate  misunderstandings  let  us  note  that  much  futile 
argument  over  the  history  of  religion  and  its  effects  upon 
mankind  has  sprung  from  a  failure  to  analyze  religion  into 
its  components.     I  conceive  it  to  be  a  compound,  more  or 
less  separable,  of  ecclesiasticism,  theology,  and  the  religious 
impulse  itself.     In  ecclesiasticism  should  be  included  reli-     '^^ 
gious    organization,    its    mechanics,    cults,_  property,  and        n 
functionaries.     Theology    signifies    the    religious    code    of     T^ 
thought,  its  outlook  on  life,  its  interpretation  of  the  world. 
The  religious  impulse  t  understand  as  the  desire  to  pene-  >-*^ 
trate  the  unknown,  to  grow  and  expand.     To  revert  to 
an  ancient  formula,  I  mean  by  religious  impulse  faith  rather 
than  works,  the  adventurous  spirit  that  dares  to  search 
the  infinite  rather  than  the  industrious  performer  of  ritual- 
istic duties :    in  short,  the  chief  mark  and  service  of  the 
religious  impulse  is  faith  in  the  sense  G.  Lowes  Dickinson 
uses  it,  as  "the  sense  and  the  call  of  the  open  horizon."  ^ 
Naturally  it  will  be  almost  impossible  to  disentangle  these 
three  strands  and  keep  them  disentangled  throughout  our 
discussion.     The   context   in   each   case   should   show   on 
which  of  them  the  emphasis  is  being  laid. 

^  Religion,  84. 


41 6  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Another  source  of  error  may  be  disposed  of,  namely, 
the  notion  that  the  progressive  function  of  religion  is  proved 
by  its  instinctive  character.  The  syllogism  runs  somewhat 
thus :  All  instincts  being  the  product  of  selection  must 
have  survival  value,  therefore  are  good ;  religion  is  an 
instinct,  therefore  it  must  not  only  be  native  and  funda- 
mental, but  also  inevitably  serviceable  to  man.  In  answer 
it  is  only  necessary  to  observe  that  all  instincts  are  by  no 
means  equally  serviceable ;  some  are  themselves  survivals, 
rudimentary  in  character  like  the  human  appendix.  Nor 
is  it  correct  to  call  religion  an  instinct :  at  best  itjs_a  com- 
plex^f  complexes,  not  a  definite,  explicit  reaction  of  strictly 
instinctive  type.  Religion  Ts~rooted,  however,  in  instinc- 
tive impulses  and  in  such  instincts  and  emotions  as  fear, 
love,  acquisitiveness,  pugnacity,  curiosity,  reverence,  self- 
abasement.^ 

In  searching  out  the  biological  and  social  services  of 
religion  it  is  unnecessary,  it  is  in  fact  a  confession  of  weak- 
ness, to  resort  to  any  such  flimsy  biological  assumption.^ 
The  culture-history  of  mankind  is  the  legitimate  field  of 
search,  since  religion  is  a  purely  human  product.  Within 
this  field  it  is  possible  to  frame  a  case  for  the  service  of 
religion  to  human  progress  under  four  heads :  (i )  by  way 
of  social  discipline;  (2)  in  the  economic  struggle  for  satis- 
faction of  life  needs ;  (3)  in  cultivating  the  habit  of  specu- 
lation ;  (4)  in  fostering  ideals,  and  particularly  the  posi- 
tive ideal  of  altruism.  Perhaps  a  fifth  might  be  added, 
but  simply  as  summarizing  the  others,  namely,  the  expan- 
sion and  enriching  of  human  personality.  Or,  if  one  is 
seeking  a  very  broad  formula,  the  historic  value  of  religion 

^  Cf.  Leuba,  A  Psychological  Study  of  Religion,  9  ;  C.  Lloyd  Morgan,  article 
"Instinct"  in  Hastings'  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics. 

2  It  is  this  mixture  of  biology  and  mysticism  which  renders  so  unconvinc- 
ing such  a  book  as  Reichardt's  The  Significance  of  Ancient  Religions  in  Rela- 
tion to  Human  Evolution  and  Brain  Development. 


RFXIGION  417 

lies  in  its  service  to  active  social  adaptation.^     But  it  will 
serve  our  purpose  better  to  follow  the  fourfold  analysis. 


Since  religion  is  belief,  and  since  men  are  held  together 
less  by  actual  absolute  identity  of  interest  than  by  what 
they  believe  to  bgjjidr.  m  1 1 1 1 1  n,l  inter  est  s ,  it  is  to  be  expected 
that  religion  should  function  for  social  order  and  discipline. 
Whether  it  be  gain  or  loss,  reHgion  has  served  to  "domesti- 
cate" men.  But  it  is  doubtful  whether  we  can  claim,  as 
some  enthusiasts  do,^  that  religion's  function  is  to  shift 
the  individual's  attention  from  self  to  society;  for  reh- 
gion  has  an  individualistic  aspect.  Hence  Kidd  puts  the 
case  too  strongly  for  religion  as  the  social  constraint  which 
provides  an  ultra-rational  sanction  for  subordinating  the 
individual  where  his  interests  and  the  interests  of  the  social 
organism  are  antagonistic.^  "^^ 

In  early  stages  of  human  history  men  do  not  stop  to  dis-  ^'-^'^ 
criminate  between  natural  and  supernatural,  or  between 
rational  and  ultra-rational.  All  their  experiences  are  on  a 
common  plane.  Hence  it  is  better  to  say  that  their  experi- 
ences in  the  imaginary  environment  led  them  to  a  certain 
unity  of  sentiment,  thought,  and  conduct,  hence  to  identi- 
fication with,  rather  than  subordination  to,  the  group : 
for  primitive  groups  were  so  small  that  individual  experi- 
ences soon  became  generalized  by  the  whole  group  and 
entered  into  the  common  stock.  It  is  this  unifying  of  a 
common  behef  that  does  so  much  to  give  coherence  to 
primitive  groups.  They  may,  in  fact,  without  seriously 
maltreating  the  truth,  be  regarded  as  cult-unions.^     The 

^  Cf.  Comte,  Positive  Philosophy,  i,  4 ;  Bristol,  Social  Adaptation,  26. 
^  E.g.,  Elwang,  The  Social  Function  of  Religious  Belief. 
^  Social  Evolution,  chap.  v. 

''  Cf.  Lippert,  Kulturgcschichte,  ii,  261-3,  272,  466  fif. ;  De  Coulanges,  La 
Cite  antique,  2d  ed.,  chap.  ii. 
2e 


41 8  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

cult  of  a  local  divinity  or  of  a  common  ancestor  glued  to- 
gether families,  clans,  and  even  larger  groups.  This  serv- 
ice is  strongly  comparable  to  that  of  war  or  blood-kin- 
ship. It  may  well  be,  as  Herbert  Spencer  argued,  that 
common  propitiation  of  local  big  ghosts  may  have  carried 
over  from  the  propitiation  of  the  ruhng  men,  —  chiefs, 
medicine  men,  and  the  hke  —  whose  aftermath  they  are. 
But  that,  if  it  be  true,  simply  estabhshes  the  more  firmly 
the  aboriginal  connection  between  the  pohtical  and  the 
reUgious  forces  for  social  control.  The  one  reenforces 
the  other.  Of  course,  religion  at  this  stage  is  not  very  soul- 
satisfying  :  for  it  consists  largely  of  taboos ;  it  is  negative ; 
it  is  almost  wholly  ritualistic,  confined  to  methods  of  exor- 
cising, avoiding,  appeasing,  flattering  hostile  spirits ;  its 
ethical  content  is  practically  nil ;  it  revolves  about  the 
pole  of  fear  rather  than  of  love.  Yet  the  response  to  a 
common  danger  or  common  fear,  shaping  itself  into  a  com- 
mon prohibition,  constitutes  a  tremendous  impulse  to  social 
unity.  Danger  makes  animals  huddle  or  bunch  together ; 
children  cuddle  and  nestle  under  the  shelter  of  their  elders ; 
men  'stick  together'  in  times  of  crisis.  The  warmth  and 
safety  resulting  are  remembered,  and  when  danger  recurs  the 
impulse  to  stick  together  is  heightened  by  both  prudential 
and  pleasurable  motives.  Hence  even  a  religion  of  nega- 
tion and  fear  may  develop  social  solidarity. 

This  is  the  so-called  biological  service  of  religion  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  If  further  details  be  necessary, 
we  may  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  religious  and  cere- 
monial institutions  aid  in  amplifying  social  structure,  in 
creating  diversity  of  social  groups,  in  specialization  of 
functions  and  classes.  It  validates  and  fortifies  authority, 
thus  aiding  leadership  and  gratifying  lust  for  power  and 
desire  for  social  distinction.  This  political  service  is 
rounded  out  by  an  ethical  function  also  having  to  do  with 


RELIGION  419 

social  consolidation,  namely,  care  and  protection  of  the 
weak,  notably  women,  children,  the  aged,  widows  and  or- 
phans. This  rather  unconscious  subordination  of  indi- 
vidual to  group  becomes,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  moment,  more 
or  less  voluntary  and  ethical  with  the  development  of  moral 
idealism ;  and  in  this  process  rehgion  had  its  due  share. 

Having  recognized  already  and  repeatedly  the  impor- 
tance of  the  economic  elements  in  human  development,  we  xaJ^ 
are  not  unprepared  for  the  second  great  function  of  religion. 
Men  have  sought  through  it  life,  health,  food,  peace,  se- 
curity from  enemies,  children,  love,  and  power;  in  short, 
insurance.  They  have  always  used  rehgion  for  these  life 
ends  when  it  has  been  real  religion.  When  they  have  not 
put  it  to  practical  use  it  has  been  mythology  or  poetry  or 
theology  or  an  exercise  in  logic,  or  anything  but  religion. 
Leuba  says :  "The  truth  of  the  matter  can  be  put  in  this 
way  :  God  is  not  known,  he  is  not  understood:  he  is  used^  ^ 
At  the  Sixth  International  Congress  of  Psychology  in  1909 
he  defined  religion  as  "that  portion  of  the  struggle  for 
life  which  is  made  by  the  aid  of  certain  forces  of  the  spiritual 
order.  It  is  one  of  the  means  discovered  by  man  for  hv- 
ing  better  and  more  abundantly."  ^ 

Through  taboos,  the  development  of  a  priestly  class, 
and  the  worship  of  nature  spirits,  religion  affects  the  in- 
dustrial organization.  How  the  taboo  cuts  across  pro- 
duction and  consumption  has  already  been  sufhciently 
considered  in  Chapter  XV.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the 
taboo  has  always  been  for  the  best  economic  interests  of 
the  group  :  indeed,  it  often  works  directly  counter  to  them  ; 
but  it  is  at  least  arguable  that  what  was  lost  in  material 

^  The  Monist,  July,  1910. 

^  Quoted  in  Revue  Philosophique,  October,  1909 ;  cf.  James,  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience,  p.  507 ;  Chatterton-Hill,  Heredity  and  Selection  in 
Sociology,  Introd.,  p.  xxvii ;  see  also  pp.  544-5,  554;  cf.  also  Grant  Allen, 
Evolution  of  the  Idea  oj  God,  chap,  ii,  etc. 


420  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

goods  was  recouped  in  discipline  and  the  habit  of  obedience 
to  law.^  Perhaps  the  same  might  be  said  of  priesthoods. 
They  arose  by  a  sort  of  division  of  labor  in  response  to  a 
demand  for  specialized  ability  in  controlling  the  spirit 
world.  This  may  have  been  again  an  example  of  gross 
human  credulity,  but  it  was  practical.  The  unseen  was 
peopled  with  mysterious  beings  and  forces;  if  A's  magic 
or  prayers  or  offerings  worked  better  than  the  average 
man's  it  was  eminently  wise  to  set  him  apart  for  this  pur- 
pose. Incidentally,  he  got  leisure  to  pursue  his  science ; 
indeed,  he  had  to  pursue  it  to  maintain  his  own  reputation. 
Thus  were  laid  the  foundations  for  both  real  natural  science 
and  higher  technical  training.  As  these  educational 
developments  are  concerned  primarily  with  food -getting,  — 
agriculture,  hunting,  fishing  —  the  priest  or  medicine  man 
is  no  inconsiderable  element  in  primitive  industry. 

Economically,  then,  the  chief  service  of  religion  has 
been  to  orient  man's  mind  in  the  direction  of  active  control 
over  his  natural  environment.  To  pray  for  rain  or  to  visit 
the  medicine  man  for  aid  in  the  chase  was  better  than 
passively  to  accept  untoward  conditions.  This  dynamic 
attitude  served  to  energize  life  and  make  it  productive. 
Hence  we  can  understand  Carver's  dictum  that  since  group 
strength  is  the  final  test  that  is  the  best  religion  which 
stimulates  to  high  endeavor  and  develops  the  latent  ener- 
gies of  a  people,  enables  them  to  survive  in  competition 
with  other  people  and  to  dominate  them.^  Hence  any 
religion  which  fosters  quiescence,  passive  acceptance,  fatal- 

^  The  costs  of  the  taboo  upon  labor  in  rest  days,  holy  days,  and  fast  days 
may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  these  unproductive  days  eat  up  frequently  a 
third  to  a  half  of  the  year.  Hence  Webster  {Rest  Days,  p.  302)  concludes  : 
"It  is  fairly  obvious  that  the  observance  of  tabooed  and  unlucky  days  must 
be  included  among  the  many  superstitions  which  have  retarded  the  progress 
of  mankind."     His  great  collection  of  facts  amply  bears  out  this  judgment. 

'^  The  Religion  Worth  Having,  pp.  13,  22-3,  etc. 


RELIGION  421 

ism,  negation  of  this  world,  or  whose  costs  (in  holy  days, 
churches,  rituals,  non-productive  priesthoods)  dry  up  the 
springs  of  productive  endeavor,  is  a  positive  hindrance  to 
progress. 

It  is  possible  to  distinguish  thus  two  types  of  religion : 
(i)  the  dynamic,  experimental,  expansive,  energizing,  con- 
quering, realistic;  (2)  the  anodynic,  passive,  apologetic, 
soothing,  deenergizing,  narcotic,  or  pietistic.  Unmis- 
takably, humanity  has  carried  along  both  these  types. 
In  the  absence  of  a  proper  marking  system  I  shall  not  pre- 
sume to  say  which  has  prevailed  in  the  past.  But  at 
present  the  chief  economic  function  of  organized  religion 
is  apparently  the  conservation  of  property :  this  in  spite 
of  the  conquest  of  many  pulpits  by  socialism.  Its  effect 
upon  industrial  poHcy  is  slight.  It  consumes  vast  amounts 
of  capital  in  slightly  used  buildings,  which  contribute 
nothing  in  taxes.  Its  rest  days  are  wasteful.  On  the  other 
hand,  those  religious  movements  which  aim  to  conserve 
health  are  performing  a  very  notable  economic  service ; 
likewise  those  which  seek  to  provide  wholesome  recreation 
and  education.  (_3} 

The  third  social  service  of  religion,  namely  its  culti- ^^^^y^^^^ 
vating  of  speculation  is,  as  might  be  expected,  less  tangible  ' 
than  the  first  two.  Yet  it  did  unmistakably  teach  men 
to  look  beyond  their  noses,  away  from  the  seen  into  the 
unseen :  it  is  better  occasionally  for  a  man  to  look  at  the 
stars  than  to  keep  his  eyes  forever  fixed  on  his  navel,  even 
if  he  sometimes  fall  into  a  ditch  —  he  will  usually  find 
good  company  there  !  Comte  ^  credited  religion  with  what 
every  philosopher  approves  of,  a  germanent  speculative 
class,  forward  lookers.  This  speculation  has  functioned 
in  two  directions,  answering  two  deeply  rooted  longings. 
The  first  of  them  is  peaceful  adaptation  to  the  present  in 
'  Positive  Philosophy,  Bohn  ed.  II,  316. 


/Cv 


422  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  widest  sense.  James  concluded  that  the  religious 
life  consists  in  belief  that  there  is  an  unseen  order  and  that 
our  supreme  good  lies  in  harmoniously  adjusting  ourselves 
thereto.^  Speculation,  a  preliminary  to  scientific  hypoth- 
esis, must  chart  this  unseen  order  and  open  it  to  man. 
The  other  longing  is  to  penetrate  the  future,  to  adapt  by 
anticipation.  Here  appear  prophecy,  divination,  auspices, 
all  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  quackery,  but  all  tending 
toward  scientific  prevision  and  notions  of  order  in  the 
Cosmos.  That  theology  and  religious  dogma  stultified 
the  intellect  does  not  prove  that  they  failed  to  serve  philo- 
sophic inquiry.  Crozier  acclaims  religion  for  having  stilled 
the  unrest  of  the  intellect  by  giving  each  people  its  satis- 
factory explanation  of  the  cause  and  origin  of  things.^ 
But  this  in  itself  might  easily  be  a  dis-service.  The  great 
achievement  of  religion  in  this  regard  was  indirect  and  unin- 
tentional, a  by-product  —  the  habit  of  inquirv-  Remem- 
ber that  religion  is  positive :  it  answers  questions,  never 
raises  them.  But  speculation  once  set  going  jumps  the 
fences  of  its  own  field  and  goes  off  adventuring.  Religion 
may  regard  philosophic  and  scientific  speculation  with 
dismay  as  changeling  children ;  nevertheless,  their  origin 
is  pretty  obvious.  It  may  sound  odd  to  identify  faith 
with  speculation,  but  it  is  precisely  that  identification  which 
we  have  already  approved  in  speaking  of  the  religious 
impulse  or  faith  as  the  "sense  and  call  of  the  open  horizon." 
The  fourth  service  of  religion  in  fostering  idealism  over- 
ops  all  the  rest.  Formerly,  at  least,  religion  seems  to 
have  comprised  most  if  not  all  the  philosophy  and  idealism 
f  the  masses.^  These  ideals  in  the  concrete  include  the 
vision  of  a  larger,  higher  life,  the  domestication  of  hostile 

^  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  53. 

'^  Civilization  and  Progress,  263. 

'  Cf.  Von  Hartmann,  The  Religion  of  the  Future,  73-5. 


RELIGION  423 

Nature,  the  triumph  of  right  and  justice,  moral  courage, 
duty,  broadening  sympathy,  participation  in  creative 
power,  and  cooperation  with  Divine  Perfection  in  human 
development.  They  may  be  summarized  in  Stratton's 
definition  of  religion  as  "Man's  whole  bearing  to  what 
seems  to  him  the  'Best  or  Greatest.'"^  That  is,  it  gave 
men  new  concepts  of  higher  power.  To  be  sure,  this  power 
(or  "the  powers")  of  the  unseen  was  not  always  nor  even 
customarily  friendly.  But  gradually  as  men's  own  senti- 
ments became  refined  they  conceived  the  unseen  as  more 
lovable  and  kindly :  belief  in  a  Higher  Power  probably 
stimulated  an  ambition  to  know  or  to  be  better.  Thus 
their  own  circle  of  kindly  acquaintance  was  widened,  and 
good  will  was  proportionately  increased.  The  worship 
of  ancestors  served  to  broaden  and  prolong  affections. 
The  habit  of  offerings,  sacrifices,  and  particularly  the 
destruction  of  property  for  and  with  the  dead,  while  en- 
taihng  enormous  economic  losses,  developed  the  habit 
and  the  ideal  of  liberahty  and  hospitality.  Man  is  by 
nature  a  prodigal  son  :  hence,  perhaps,  he  needed  no  stimu- 
lus from  religion  to  make  him  a  good  spender :  yet  a  race 
of  men  animated  by  the  motive  of  saving  alone  would  be 
not  only  an  ethical  but  an  economic  monstrosity. 

If  we  conceive  progress  as  a  movement  through  a  cycle 
of  values,  religion  must  be  considered  as  one  of  the  chief 
elements  in  the  formulation  and  maintenance  of  social 
value.  Many  students  of  rehgion  have  seized  this  as  one 
of  its  most  important  elements.  Professor  Ellwood  goes 
farther  and  claims  that  it  is  primarily  a  valuing  attitude ; 
and  that  it  is  alwavs  participation  in  the  ideal  values  of  the 
social  hfe.  Hence  its  social  significance  is  to  be  found  in 
the  support  which  it  has  given  in  all  stages  of  human  cul- 
ture to  custom,  moral  standards,  and  moral  ideals.     But 

'  The  Psychology  of  the  Religions  Life,  343. 


424  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

its  paramount  social  service  from  the  standpoint  of  pro- 
gressive civilization  is  its  contribution  to  maintaining  the 
continuity  of  standards  of  typal  worth,  or  put  in  another 
way,  its  conservation  of  social  survival  values.  Through 
its  peculiar  sanctions  religion  has  made  it  possible  easily 
to  enforce  the  claims  of  these  ideals  and  social  values  upon 
the  individual.  Lest  we  might  say,  very  well,  we  accept 
the  function  of  religion  as  social  control  in  the  past,  but 
consider  it  no  longer  necessary,  Ellwood  anticipates  the 
objection  by  claiming  that  the  supreme  role  of  religion  in 
the  higher  stages  of  human  culture  is  to  enforce  the  claim 
to  dominance  in  the  hfe  of  man  of  the  ideal  social  values.^ 
In  other  words,  in  spite  of  the  conservative,  static  tendency 
of  religion,  in  spite  of  its  easy  confusion  of  superstition 
with  duty,  of  dogmatism  with  idealism,  religion  has  furnished 
in  the  past  and  will  continue  in  the  future  to  furnish  strong 
sanctions  for  social  morality ;  it  will  provide  for  that  con- 
scious and  voluntary  subordination  of  the  self  to  the  group 
which  in  primitive  societies  we  have  seen  was  more  or  less 
instinctive  and  irrational. 

Through  its  function  of  social  control  religion  yielded 
as  a  by-product  an  emphasis  upon  altruism,  and  usually 
upon  optimism,  both  indispensable  to  social  health  and 
expansion.  Both  altruism  and  optimism  may  be  only 
parts  of  the  will  to  illusion.  But  they  have  always  been 
marks  of  a  progressive  civilization.  A  people  without 
buoyancy  and  ideals  is  doomed.  And  religion  deals  in 
these  goods.  It  has  been  urged  that  an  irreligious  hedon- 
ism lands  a  people  in  anarchy  and  decay.  True.  The 
corollary  is  that  a  pessimistic  philosophy  —  like,  say, 
Schopenhauer's  — -  brings  with  it  race-suicide.  Undoubt- 
edly,  that   was   Schopenhauer's   remedy   for   our  world's 

1  C.  A.  Ellwood,  "The  Social  Function  of  Religion,"  Am.  J.  Soclol.,  Nov. 
1913,  pp.  294,  299,  301,  302  ;  cf.  King,  Development  of  Religion,  ch.  iii-iv. 


RELIGION  425 

ills ;  but  parenthetically  we  might  point  out  that  economic 
pessimism,  the  desire  to  'get  on,'  success,  slavery,  and 
primitive  Christianity  are  all  open  to  the  same  charge  of 
race-suicide;  St.  Augustine  thought  it  no  great  matter 
if  the  world  should  come  to  an  end  through  the  refusal  of 
people  to  marry  and  procreate.  Faith,  says  the  philos- 
opher who  argues  thus,  faith  in  the  rational  world-order 
and  in  immortality  alone  will  keep  a  race  sane,  healthy, 
prosperous.  Without  asserting  any  a  priori  certitude 
that  there  is  a  God  to  whom  man's  destiny  is  mean- 
ingful, or  that  destiny  does  not  cease  with  this  earthly 
life,  he  affirms  that  Nature  decrees  that  the  man  who 
survives,  the  race  that  persists,  must  believe  these 
things.  They  are  a  part  of  the  equipment  of  the  fittest 
to  survive.^ 

I  do  not  know  whether  this  is  true  or  not.  But  I  do_ 
know  that  the  imaginary  environment  has  had  a  stupendous 
effect  in  the  selection  of  certain  of  man's  ideals,  his  institu- 
tions  for  control,  and  his  systems  of  education.  We  have 
laid  considerable  stress  upon  contact  with  foreign  environ- 
ments as  a  means  for  the  cross-fertilization  of  cultures. 
Now  this  is  precisely  the  supreme  function  of  the  unseen 
environment.  It  has  opened  to  man  a  new  bourne,  a  whole 
continent,  nay,  a  universe  with  infinite  range  of  oppor- 
tunities for  contact  with  the  unsuspected.  There  is  a 
land  of  dreams  :  it  is  infinitely  rich  and  infinitely  populous. 
Commerce  with  it  is  even  more  stimulating  than  with 
China  or  Peru.  And  it  is  at  this  point  that  religion  makes 
its  contact  with  the  fine  arts.  How  it  has  served  to  evoke 
architecture,  sculpture,  painting,  music,  poetry,  and  the 
drama  is  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  history.  This  is 
the  self -transcending  element  in  human  life,  the  field  wherein 
is  cultivated  most  of  the  values  that  make  life  worth  while. 

*  H.  B.  Alexander,  "Religion  and  Progress,"  Hibbert  Journal,  g :  169-187. 


426  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Here  man  becomes  a  real  creator.  I  doubt  if  the  orthodox 
religionists  would  accept  the  philosopher's  definition  of 
religion  as  above  all  else,  "participation  in  creative  power, 
and  therefore  creation  itself,"  or  his  further  conclusion 
that  "man  is  on  the  path  of  religion  as  soon  as  he  makes 
a  serious  effort  to  transcend  himself,  not  only  quantita- 
tively but  qualitatively."  ^  Certainly  if  this  be  true,  much 
of  what  has  passed  itself  off  for  religion  was  something  quite 
different.  A  religion  of  fear  hke  avoidance-cults,  primi- 
tive Judaism,  or  Puritanism  is  constricting  to  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  creative  impulse :  the  history  of  art  bears 
out  this  principle.  Evidently  M.  Boutroux  is  taking  reli- 
gion at  its  highest  as  the  rehgious  impulse.  And  it  is  in 
this  sense  that  Professor  Foster  conceives  the  function  of 
the  God-thought  as  enabling  man  to  enlarge  and  enrich 
his  personality  through  self-expression.  He  starts  from 
what  he  holds  to  be  Nietzsche's  theory  that  self-discharge 
rather  than  self-preservation  is  the  primary  interest  of  an 
organism ;  that  is,  self-expression,  hving  out  Hfe  rather 
than  mere  being  or  adjustment.  Yet  in  the  highest  sense 
the  two  are  correlative :  self-expression  is  self-preserva- 
tion, for  it  is  the  way  to  organic  and  functional  self-com- 
pletion.- Religion  has  aided  the  psycho-physiological 
organism  in  its  ideal-producing  capacity  largely  through 
the  "conviction  of  achievability."  This  call  to  creative 
effort  is  immensely  valuable.  And  it  is  right  here  that^ 
religious  ideahsm  may  prove  of  great  service  to  human  I 
development  as  a  corrective  to  scientific  arrogance,  and  I 
more  particularly  to  that  chilling  pessimism  which  dog-  I 
matic  science  spreads.  -^ 

^  Boutroux,  "The  Essence  of  Religion,"  Contemp.  Rev.,  Dec.  1914,  787- 
805  ;   cf.  his  Science  and  Religion,  378. 

2  The  Function  of  Religion  in  Alan's  Struggle  for  Existence,  18,  no.  Is 
not  Foster's  rendering  of  Nietzsche's  will-to-power  as  self-expression  or  self- 
discharge  rather  tame? 


RELIGION  427 


In  spite  of  its  services  to  humanity  religion  has  directly 
and  indirectly  blocked  and  hindered  our  development.     It 
has  promoted  altruism,  but  it  has  also  bred  heresy-bait- 
ing, inquisitions,  and  dragonnades.     Dean  Swift  once  caus- 
tically remarked  that  we  have  just  enough  religion  to  make 
us  hate,  but  not  enough  to  make  us  love  one  another.     It 
is  presumed  to  be  liberalizing  and  unselfing ;  but  it  is  like- 
wise  narrowing   and   exclusive.     WilHam   James   declared 
that  religion  is  ''a  monumental  chapter  in  thp  his1;nrv  of 
human  egotism.''     And  certain  it  is  that  no  man  can  be 
meaner  or  more  inconsiderate  of  others  than  the  man  who 
is  bound  body  and  soul  to  a  little  idea-tight  cult.     Reli- 
gion makes  for  unity  of  thought  and  sentiment ;    but  it 
also  makes  for  social  dismemberment,  a  divisive  wedge, 
when  it  takes  on  the  form  of  multitudinous  exclusive  sects. 
This  would  indicate  that  religious  unity  is  effect  not  cause, 
that  it  comes  from  a  common  reaction  to  certain  common 
experiences,  and  therefore  is  to  be  expected  only  in  com- 
paratively small  groups  where  differentiation  by  class  or 
occupation  or  other  interest  has  only  slightly  set  in.     Reli- 
gious orthodoxy  is  a  source  of  strength  to  the  individuals 
holding  to  it ;   but  communities  flourish  just  in  proportion 
to  the  number  of  heretics  they  include.     Heresy  means 
variation,  the  indispensable  acid  in  the  progressive  reac- 
tion. 

Religion  signifies  morality,  new  ethical  ideals.  But 
only  partially  so :  for  in  the  beginning  religion  and  ethics 
were  separate.  Religion  was  more  closely  associated  with 
magical  ceremonials  than  with  ideals  of  what  we  should 
call  righteousness.  The  savage  does  not  distinguish  clearly 
between  holy  and  unholy  in  the  persons  or  things  he  ta- 
boos :   he  lumps  them  all  together  into  the  class  '  danger- 


428  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

ous,'  and  attempts  to  insulate  them.  Hence  it  is  difficult 
to  find  out  what  is  unclean  and  what  sacred ;  they  fuse. 
Thus,  for  example,  the  Greeks  were  uncertain  whether 
the  Jews  worshiped  or  abominated  swine.  Even  the 
most  religious  savage  may  have  no  concept  of  sin.  It  is, 
as  Miss  Kingsley  said,  "a  thing  he  can  commit  now  and 
again  if  he  is  fool  enough.  Sin  to  him  not  being  what  it 
is  to  us,  a  vile  treason  against  a  loving  Father,  but  a  very 
ill-advised  act  against  powerful,  nasty-tempered  spirits."  ^ 
By  the  time  the  religious  sentiments  are  organized  into  a 
church,  they  have  become  so  faded  and  stiff  with  conven- 
tionality that  the  church  serves  rather  as  a  reflecting  sur- 
face for  certain  class  morals  than  as  the  definite  protagonist 
of  splendid  new  ethical  discoveries.  Hence  the  church 
is  constantly  faced  with  the  specter  of  the  dissenter,  the 
prophet,  the  moral  and  religious  changeling.  I  wonder, 
however,  if  Sumner  is  not  somewhat  inclined  to  overstate 
the  case  against  the  church  as  a  moral  leader ;    he  says : 

"The  church  never  was  on  the  level  of  the  better  mores 
of  any  time.  Every  investigation  which  we  make  leads 
us  not  to  the  church  as  the  inspirer  and  leader,  but  to  the 
dissenting  apostles  of  righteousness,  to  the  great  fluctu- 
ations in  the  mores."  ^ 

Organized  religion  is  often  credited  with  contributions 
to  moral  progress  which  in  all  candor  should  be  accounted 
for  otherwise.  The  religious  impulse  expresses  itself 
through  secular  no  less  than  ecclesiastical  organizations. 
Indeed,  the  church  is  oftener  the  follower  than  the  leader 
in  great  moral  or  intellectual  advances.  Hence  such  ap- 
parent contradictions  as  the  Christian  Church  at  one 
time  espousing  the  cause  of  the  slave,  at  others  helping  to 
forge   his   chains ;     or   the   wavering   support   which   the 

*  West  African  Studies,  159.  2  Folkways,  224. 


RELIGION  429 

Catholic  Church  or  the  English  bishops  offer  to  the  tem- 
perance movement.  In  the  matter  of  the  family,  too, 
while  the  theory  of  Christianity  placed  domestic  life  upon 
an  exalted  spiritual  plane,  the  Christian  church  never  has 
succeeded  in  handling  effectively  or  consistently  the  prob- 
lems of  sex  life.  From  Paul  to  Augustine,  from  Augus- 
tine to  the  canon  law  doctors  and  from  them  to  Luther 
and  onward  to  the  present,  the  church  leaders  have  per- 
sistently degraded  the  spiritual  interpretation  of  the  family 
offered  by  Jesus  himself.  To  take  a  concrete  example : 
the  position  of  woman  under  the  Church  never  attained 
the  height  and  dignity  she  had  under  Roman  Law.  In 
this  case  as  in  others,  the  beneficent  and  kindly  elements 
in  religion  seem  to  have  been  introduced  as  the  result  of 
growth  in  culture  along  secular  lines.  The  refining  of  the 
parental  relation  and  the  grov/th  of  comradeship  through 
common  participation  in  war,  industry,  and  play  react 
upon  cult  ideals.  The  savagery  of  the  physical  environment 
and  the  hardness  of  the  struggle  for  existence  are  reflected 
in  the  terrible '  visages  of  the  gods.  An  era  of  surplus 
not  only  induces  the  mores  of  optimism  but  creates  a  new 
race  of  kindlier  gods.  Hence,  if  we  adhere  to  our  caution 
as  to  using  the  term  'cause'  in  social  phenomena,  and  if 
we  recall  once  more  the  organic  nature  of  the  social  process, 
there  is  some  justification  for  Buckle's  thesis  that,  looking 
at  things  in  the  large,  the  religion  of  mankind  is  the  eft'ect 
of  their  improvement,  not  the  cause  of  it.^ 

EarHer  in  this  chapter  we  hinted  that  religion  in  cutting 
across  the  economic  field  is  not  always  a  constructive 
agency.  Sometimes  it  destroys  property  outright,  some- 
times merely  allows  it  to  go  to  rack  through  taboos,  whose 
ultimate  aim  is,  ostensibly  of  course,  fuller  economic  in- 
surance, but  whose  immediate  effect  may  not  be  altogether 

^  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  chaps,  v-vi. 


430  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

wise  or  calculated  to  promote  the  progressive  well-being  of 
a  group.  Religion,  moreover,  may  slice  up  a  working 
population  into  mutually  hostile  and  suspicious  sects, 
which  are  thereby  rendered  quite  unable  to  perceive  the 
advantage  of  massing  their  numbers  for  economic  strategy. 
It  would  seem  that  the  religious  differences,  for  instance 
between  Orangemen  and  Fenians  in  Ireland,  have  been 
deliberately  exploited  to  block  the  progress  of  the  working 
classes  in  collective  bargaining  with  their  employers.^  It 
is  also  charged  by  certain  critics  of  religious  missions  that 
religious  propaganda  which  does  not  take  into  account 
the  economic  life  of  backward  peoples,  leaves  them  in  a 
worse  plight  than  they  were  before ;  that  is,  by  cutting 
them  loose  from  their  former  industrial  ways  and  providing 
no  substitute,  the  habits  of  improvidence  and  dependency 
are  fostered.  These  critics  propose  to  substitute  indus- 
trial for  religious  missions.^ 

It  is  perhaps  superfluous  to  point  out  how  religious  dif- 
ferences erect  and  maintain  inter-group  barriers.  Wor- 
ship of  a  strange  god  brands  as  an  alien  and  barbarian 
the  man  from  over  the  mountain  :  we  are  the  Chosen  Peo- 
ple ;  you  are  beyond  the  pale.  Even  such  high-water 
marks  of  exalted  religious  sentiment  as  the  Psalms  or  the 
Rig-Veda  betray  constantly  the  political  and  religious 
hostilities  bred  of  strong  national  cults.  Ecclesiasticism 
means  priestly  castes,  and  what  is  far  worse  for  both  in- 
ternal and  external  social  polity,  intolerance.  The  author 
of  the  article  "Toleration"  in  the  Catholic  Encyclopedia 
seems  to  imply  that  no  religion  can  be  at  once  alive  and 
tolerant.     "Nowhere    is    dogmatic    intolerance    so    neces- 

1  This  is  the  central  theme  in  Mr.  St.  John  Erskine's  thrilling  little  play, 
Mixed  Marriage. 

^  See,  e.g.,  Meyer,  "Creating  Social  Values  in  the  Tropics,"  Am.  J.  Social., 
21 :  662-5.  Hindu  students  at  American  Universities  frequently  make  the 
same  demand. 


RELIGION  431 

sary  a  rule  of  life  as  in  the  domain  of  religious  belief,  since 
for  each  individual  his  eternal  salvation  is  at  stake."  The 
Catholic  Church  "regards  dogmatic  intolerance  not  alone  , 
as  her  incontestable  right  but  also  as  a  sacred  duty.  If 
Christian  truth  like  every  other  truth  is  incapable  of  double 
dealing,  it  must  be  as  intolerant  as  the  multiplication  table 
or  geometry.  .  .  .  And  it  is  just  in  this  exclusiveness  that 
lies  her  unique  strength,  the  stirring  power  of  her  propa-| 
ganda,  the  unfailing  vigour  of  her  progress."  Liberalism, 
as  synonym  for  tolerance,  is  identified  by  the  Catholic 
hierarchy  with  modernism  and  officially  proscribed  by  a 
papal  bull. 

We  have  already  shown  that  tolerance  is  the  indis- 
pensable prerequisite  to  peaceful  race  contacts  and  to 
cultural  assimilations,  upon  which  to  so  large  a  degree  the 
fertility  and  health  of  the  social  mind  depends.  Yet  it 
must  be  recognized  that  in  the  past  some  contacts  of  race 
with  race  or  social  system  with  social  system  have  been 
far  other  than  peaceful ;  they  were  violent  clashes,  often 
the  death  struggles  of  opposing  sets  of  mores.  In  such 
contests  it  is  unquestionable  that  intolerance  meant  social 
stability,  a  strong  battle-front.  Perhaps  even  yet  there 
are  occasioris  where  unconditional  surrender  is  more  de- 
sirable and  better  social  policy  than  compromise.  But 
more  often  the  intransigent  individual  or  group  loses  the 
militant  ideahsm  of  the  hero  in  the  animosity  of  the  bigot. 
Compromise  means  more  than  the  mere  price  of  existence ; 
it  means  equally  the  price  of  a  broad,  deep,  sympathetic, 
well-ordered  life. 

Religion  may  act  favorably  upon  the  population  type. 
But  it  may  also  on  occasion  act  as  a  disastrous  counter- 
selective  force.  The  worship  of  virginity,  the  cult  of 
religious  poverty,  priestly  celibacy,  and  the  frequent  atti- 
tude of  optimistic  fataHsm  in  the  matter  of  allowing  the 


432  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

unfit  to  propagate,  have  at  times  proved  anything  but 
helpful  to  the  selection  and  maintenance  of  a  high  or  effi- 
cient type  of  population.  Sir  Francis  Galton  almost 
leaped  the  fence  of  scientific  dispassionateness  in  his  arraign- 
ment of  the  church  of  the  dark  ages  for  its  selective  policy. 
He  attributed  those  dark  ages  in  very  considerable  degree 
"to  the  celibacy  enjoined  by  religious  orders  on  their  vo- 
taries. .  .  .  The  consequence  was  that  these  gentle  na- 
tures had  no  continuance,  and  thus  .  .  .  the  church  bru- 
talized the  breed  of  our  forefathers.  .  .  .  She  practiced 
the  arts  which  breeders  would  use,  who  aimed  at  creating 
ferocious,  currish,  and  stupid  natures.  No  wonder  that 
club-law  prevailed  for  centuries  over  Europe."  ^  He  also 
makes  a  side  foray  into  the  camp  of  the  Universities,  ac- 
cusing them  of  cherishing  a  relic  of  this  same  monastic 
taboo  on  marriage. 

There  is  something  to  be  said,  however,  by  way  of  criti- 
cism of  Galton's  statement  of  the  charge  against  celibacy. 
The  dark  ages,  according  to  recent  historical  scholarship, 
were  not  nearly  so  dark  as  they  have  been  painted ;  and 
there  is  little  evidence  of  a  dearth  of  gentle  natures.  The 
assumption  that  failure  to  procreate  means  sealing  up  or 
cutting  off  gentle  spirits  from  all  means  of  perpetuating 
themselves  or  shedding  abroad  their  influence  is  unwar- 
rantable. It  would  take  considerable  scientific  evidence, 
I  am  sure,  to  prove  that  St.  Francis  married  would  have 
influenced  more  profoundly  his  generation  and  ours,  than 
St.  Francis  celibate.  It  is  quite  certain  that  Professor 
Karl  Pearson,  the  London  Eugenics  Laboratory,  and  the 
various  eugenics  societies  far  more  effectively  cry  up  the 
memory  and  influence  of  Galton  than  half  a  dozen  sons 
could  do.  Most  of  the  nonsense  talked  by  race-suicidists 
falls  flat  because  they  fail  to  recognize  the  existence  of  a 

^  Hereditary  Genius,  pp.  357  ff. 


RELIGION  433 

spiritual  parenthood  and  kinship  far  more  powerful  and 
binding  than  blood  ties.  There  remain,  however,  some 
grains  of  truth  in  the  attack  on  cehbacy,  for  frequently  that 
manner  of  life  tends  to  hypocrisy  and  sexual  aberrations  > 
that  corrupt  social  life.  Yet  on  the  whole  Galton's  estimate 
of  the  effect  of  persecution  upon  the  population  type  is 
sounder ;  for  persecution  actually  wipes  out  all  means  of 
preserving  and  perpetuating  variations  in  superior  ability, 
either  by  natural  or  social  heredity. 

In  this  same  connection,  a  word  must  be  given  to  Nietz- 
sche's charge  that  Christianity  ^'has  been  the  greatest 
misfortune  hitherto  of  mankind."  The  reason?  Because 
it  was  the  victory  of  a  baser  over  a  nobler  type  of  char- 
acter. Christianity  fostered  sympathy  and  pity,  bred 
generations  of  weaklings,  ran  counter  to  natural  selection, 
cultivated  hypocrisy  and  priestcraft,  dwarfed  and  stultified 
intelligence  by  making  doubt  a  sin,  and  threw  a  world  into 
decadence  by  making  decency  vileness  and  health  sickness.^ 
In  so  far  as  religion  feeds  sentimentalism  and  organizes 
reactionary  impulses  Nietzsche  is  right!  But  the  deeper 
implications  of  his  theory,  namely,  that  social  sympathy, 
altruism,  and  the  other  elements  in  social  selection  are 
weakness,  have  already,  we  venture  to  hope,  been  suffi- 
ciently refuted.^ 

The  effect  of  religious  predominance  in  hindering  the 
free  growth  of  secular  law  is  notorious,  as  already  pointed 
out.  And  there  is  no  sound  evidence  that  religion  has 
promoted  the  growth  of  international  law.  Whether  it 
likewise  hinders  the  development  of  secular  order  is  not 
so  evident.  Prominent  authorities  on  criminology  have 
asserted  that  countries  under  the  sway  of  a  rituahstic  type 
of  religion  are  likely  to  show  a  higher  rate  of  crime  than 
those  under  secular  or  liberal  rehgious  leadership ;   for  the 

^  Antichrist,  Sec.  i-6,  51,  etc.  ^  Ante,  chaps,  xvi,  xix. 

2f 


434  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

former  are  essentially  primitive,  with  no  organic  tie  be- 
tween religion  and  ethics.^  But  the  statistics  connecting 
crime  and  religion  are  so  far  altogether  unconvincing  either 
for  or  against  the  assumption  that  religion  aggravates  or 
reduces  the  criminal  impulse.  On  the  other  hand  anti- 
clericalism  is  charged  with  fostering  crime  on  the  ground 
that  it  stops  with  a  merely  anti  program,  that  it  is  there- 
fore destructive,  and  fails  to  pro\dde  even  a  provisory 
moral  code  to  replace  the  one  it  lays  in  ruin.-  The  recent 
experience  of  France,  however,  seems  to  indicate  at  least 
that  it  is  possible  to  develop  a  t}pe  of  rugged,  heroic 
secular  morality  through  lay  teaching,  entirely  independent 
of  religious  organizations. 

The  static  effect  of  religion  upon  law  illustrates  the  gen- 
eral conservative  influence  of  ecclesiastical  institutions. 
For,  at  least  heretofore,  religion  has  customarily  worshiped 
a  fixed,  perfect,  and  therefore  static  other-world.  It  is 
essentially  archaic,  based  on  prejudice  and  tradition ;  it 
uses  an  archaic  language,  archaic  tools,  vessels,  costumes, 
architecture.  Ages  after  other  methods  of  making  fire 
had  been  discovered,  friction-fire  was  retained  for  sacred 
festivals ;  it  survived  even  in  Great  Britain  and  Sweden 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  reten- 
tion of  human  sacrifice  —  under  the  form  of  ritual  anthro- 
pophagy, be  it  understood  —  is  typical  of  the  ecclesiastical 
tendency  to  fossilize  ideas.  Ancestor  worship,  too,  turns 
men's  minds  constantly  to  the  past,  apotheosizes  the  an- 
cients, places  the  Golden  Age  behind  instead  of  before  us. 
It  discourages  innovations,  and  finds  the  highest  wisdom 
in  holding  intact  for  transmission  to  posterity  the  treasure 
of  the  past  even  though  at  the  expense  of  moral  sensi- 
bility.    It  therefore  is  the  bulwark  of  absolutism  in  govern- 

'  Cf.  Lombroso,  Crime,  Its  Causes,  etc.,  chap,  x ;  Ellis,  The  Criminal,  185. 
^  Cf.  Fouillee,  Revue  des  Deux  Monies,  139  :  430. 


RELIGION  435 

ment.  Napoleon  felt  this  so  strongly  that  he  once  de- 
clared, "If  the  Pope  had  not  existed,  I  should  have  had 
to  invent  him." 

A  highly  differentiated  priesthood  is  likewise  profoundly 
conservative.  Mr.  F.  G.  Spencer,  in  his  attempt  to  fmd 
out  why  the  Pueblo  Indians  had  for  so  long  marked  time, 
discovered  that  no  small  share  of  the  stagnation  was  due 
to  priestly  influence,  because  the  priesthood  has  for  its 
function  the  reenforcement  of  already  static  tendencies, 
through  enhancing  superstition,  w^onders,  and  mysteries.^ 
Buckle  insisted  that  no  country  can  rise  to  eminence  so 
long  as  the  ecclesiastical  power  possesses  much  authority, 
because  the  predominance  of  the  clergy  is  necessarily  ac- 
companied by  a  corresponding  predominance  of  the  topics 
in  which  they  delight.  Now  despite  the  fact  that  his  critics 
point  out  Spain  and  Italy  as  examples  to  upset  this  generaH- 
zation,  it  remains  substantially  true.  Spain's  eminence 
was  factitious,  and  Italy's  only  sporadic.  The  clerical 
influence  in  pohtics  has  almost  invariably  proved  nefarious. 
In  education  even  worse.  Dogmatic  teaching  is  good  dis- 
ciphne,  but  it  seals  up,  nay,  it  kills  the  mind.  Speaking 
generally,  in  proportion  as  the  mental  influence  of  a  rehgion 
is  wide,  the  outlook  for  intellectual  advance  is  poor.  For 
this  reason  there  is  apparently  some  justification  for  the 
charge  that  even  to  an  age  of  barbarism  the  church  was 
perhaps  more  of  a  curse  than  a  blessing.  Usually  the 
schools  of  a  particular  religious  sect  drag  behind  the  pubHc 
secular  schools.  One  of  the  most  frequent  arguments 
for  subsidies  of  public  moneys  to  parochial  schools  is  that 
they  need  to  be  brought  up  to  the  pubhc  standards.  Such 
schools  are  backward  because  they  usuaUy  assume  religion 
to  be  the  fundamental  fact  of  Hfe ;  whereas  it  is  only  one 
of  the  elements  which  make  up  that  indissoluble  unity. 
1  Education  of  the  Pueblo  Child,  73. 


436  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

They  frequently  represent  an  antiquated  notion  of  family 
life,  wherein  the  family  was  held  superior  to  the  state. 
They  also  stand  for  an  archaic  political  system,  an  Index 
Expurgatorius  of  some  sort  or  other.  They  tend  to  stultify 
the  mind  by  holding  to  revelation  instead  of  to  free  inquiry 
after  truth  by  the  only  means  of  achieving  it,  namely, 
science  and  the  personal  impulse  to  search,  call  it  faith  or 
what  you  will. 

Hence  the  most  serious  charge  against  religion  reduces 
to   its   presumed   hindering   of   intellectual   development. 
Draper  summarized  this  line  of  criticism  in  the  memorable 
phrase,  ^'T^noranre  is  the  mother  of  Devotion."     Albeit 
he  produced  abundant  evidence  to  show  how  Latin  Chris- 
tianity begot  ignorance,  superstition,  discomfort,  disease, 
demorahzation ;    how  it  destroyed  the  finest  of  pagan  art, 
hindered  population  growth  and  induced  immorality ;  how 
it  forged  documents  and  lied  outrageously ;  how  its  benefits 
at  best  were  accidental  or  incidental  and  not  in  the  least 
intentional ;  ^    yet  we  must  discriminate,  as  he  did  not, 
between  religion  on  the  one  hand  and  theology  or  ecclesi- 
asticism  or  some  particular  phase  of  them,  on  the  other. 
Andrew  D.  White  is  much  fairer.     He  goes  out  of  his  way 
to  remark  that  a  "thoughtful,  reverent,  enlightened  clergy 
is  a  great  blessing  to  any  country;    and  anything  which 
undermines  their  legitimate  work  of  leading  men  out  of  the 
worship  of  material  things  to  the  consideration  of  that 
which  is  highest  is  a  vast  misfortune."  ^    But  he  demon- 
strates beyond  cavil  that  theology  has  sought  to  block 
every  field  of  scientific  advance  —  geography,  astronomy, 
geology,   anthropology,    meteorology,    chemistry,    physics, 
medicine,   hygiene,   and  economics.     Moreover,  he  shows 

1  J.  W.  Draper,  History  of  the  Conflict  between  Religion  and  Science,  chap.  x. 
For  the  typical. churchman's  reply,  oratorical  and  undocumented,  see  Hull, 
"The  Church  arid  Civilization,"  The  Catholic  Mind,  14 :  25-44. 

2  A  History  of  the  Warfare  cf  Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,  i,  239. 


RELIGION  437 

with  equal  justness  how  science  (these  very  sciences  at 
first  so  hateful),  has  helped  to  purge  religion  of  its  dross 
and  bring  out  its  higher  values,  by  substituting  the  Ascent 
for  the  Fall  of  man,  the  Eternal  Law  of  Righteousness  for 
petty  dogma,  oracles,  and  fetishistic  observances. 

By  way  of  summary  let  us  reiterate  that  theologv  has 
hindered  rather  than  helped  human  development,;._j£^ept 
through  its  by-product,  the  habit  of  speculation.  Priest- 
hoods have  been  enormously  expensive,  consuming  unpro- 
ductively  vast  amounts  of  capital ;  they  have  served  to 
a  limited  degree  as  patrons  of  the  arts,  as  healers,  as  teach- 
ers, but  their  political  influence  has  been  nefarious.  Or- 
ganized cults  have  served  to  nurture  the  religious  impulse, 
have  fostered  the  arts  of  literature,  music,  and  decoration, 
and  have  furnished  foci  for  the  creation  of  common  bodies 
of  belief  and  opinion,  valuable  alike  for  personal  and  group 
stabiUty ;  that  is,  they  have  added  their  ballast  to  the  other 
conservative  and  stabilizing  institutions ;  but  stability 
finds  all  too  easily  its  final  term  in  the  fossil  and  the  corpse. 
The  only  value  that  attaches  apparently  to  dogma  is  the 
negative  virtue  of  breeding  heretics.  And  it  is  in  terms 
of  these  innovating  personalities  that  religion's  contribu- 
tion to  the  stock  of  moral  ideas  is  to  be  interpreted.  Fi- 
nally, if  progress  be  interpreted  as  an  expansion,  wherever 
religion  has  been  conceived  of  and  actually  lived  as  love, 
sympathy,  tolerance,  optimism,  and  a  widening  of  human 
personaUty,  there  it  has  served  progressive  ends. 

As  to  the  future,  it  may  be  true  that  there  is  a  world- 
wide drift  in  the  direction  of  secular  education  rather  than 
religion  for  social  control,  and  that  science,  not  religion, 
will  be  the  guide  to  specific  action.  But  there  are  still 
vast  hinterlands  of  savagery  in  all  of  us  which  need  to  be 
tamed  and  reduced  to  order  by  constructive  means  if  we 
are  to  move  forward.     Rightly  viewed,  religion  ought  to 


438  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

function  positively  here ;  whether  a  religion  of  Humanity, 
or  the  Great  Unknowable,  or  Divine  Principle,  or  the 
Heavenly  Father,  matters  little.  With  the  separation  of 
the  church  from  government,  and  particularly  from  con- 
trol over  education ;  with  the  growing  concept  of  a  free 
church  in  a  free  state;  with  the  development  of  tolerance 
and  liberalism  in  creed ;  with  the  constant  iteration  of  the 
principles  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  and  the  fatherhood  of 
God ;  and  above  all  with  the  perception  of  its  mission  as 
a  helper  in  heahng  this  world's  social  ills,  religion  seems 
to  be  in  the  way  of  freeing  itself  from  many  of  the  objec- 
tions herein  set  forth.  When  it  gains  once  for  all  the  vi- 
sion of  God  as  developing,  and  conceives  that  its  only  pos- 
sible service  to  Him  is  in  the  service  of  human  society ;  when 
it  displays  itself  as  an  altogether  spiritual  activity,  resort- 
ing to  persuasion  and  relinquishing  the  last  remnant  of 
coercion,  then  it  will  have  freed  itself  completely  from  them. 
Three  significant  proofs  of  having  reached  that  stage  will 
be  freedom  from  fatalism  (the  acceptance  of  a  fully 
wrought-out  order  into  which  we  find  more  or  less  subser- 
viently our  appointed  place),  deliverance  from  a  profes- 
sional priestly  class,  and  absolute  tolerance.  Further- 
more, it  will  have  nothing  to  fear  from  science  or  the  critical 
mind.  There  will  always  be  a  place  for  faith  and  imagina- 
tion to  complete  the  circle  of  knowledge :  that  circle  must 
be  completed,  but  since  the  problem  is  infinite  and  science 
though  mighty  is  limited,  the  imagination,  or  faith  if  you 
choose,  clarified  and  adventurous,  must  do  it.  It  seems 
almost  gratuitous  to  add  that  in  the  fight  of  future  social 
progress  religion  will  be  taught  through  actual  practice 
in  healing  and  stimulating  self-help  in  men  rather  than  by 
catechising  anybody. 


IDEOLOGIST   INTERPRETATIONS 


CHAPTER  XXX 
THE   IDEALISTS 

"Mind  alone  is  the  cause  of  bondage  or  liberty  for  men," 

said  the  sages  who  indited  the  Upanishads.     Ideals  are  the 

direct  and  only  progressive  forces,  echo  the  ideaHsts :    for 

progress  is  but  the  struggle  of  man  out  of  physical  and 

mental  bondage  to  spiritual  liberty.     Ideas  are  not  the 

effects  but  the  causes  of  public  events,  declared  the  most 

learned  English  historian  of  the  nineteenth  century.     To 

the  ideahst  history  is  a  transcendental  process,  whether 

like  the  Greek  and  Roman  philosophers  he  believes  in  a 

long  past  Golden  Age  from  which  men  have  degenerated 

and  to  which  they  must  once  more  attain;    or  whether 

with  the  Church  Fathers  and  their  successors  in  Christian 

theology  and  poetry  he  accepts  the  Garden  of  Eden  with 

its  story  of 

.  .  .  "Man's  first  disobedience,  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree,  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe, 
With  loss  of  Eden,  till  one  greater  Man 
Restore  us  and  regain  the  blissful  seat  .  .  . ;" 

or  whether  with  Vico  or  Ranke  he  sees  in  terms  of  historical 

forces  rather  than  in  terms  of  God's  interfering  Providence 

and  Plans ;    or  whether  with  Hegel  he  feels  the  historical 

development  of  the  race  as  a  cool  unfolding  of  an  eternal 

Idea;    or  whether  with  Kidd  he  believes  in  biology  and 

ruthless  selection  yet  can  see  in  an  ultra-rational  sanction 

the  one  firm  basis  for  not  only  the  progress  of  human 

society  but  even  its  very  constitution. 

441 


442  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

Humanity  is  incorrigibly  idealistic.  When,  therefore, 
we  point  to  Plato,  St.  Paul,  Thomas  Aquinas,  Bossuet, 
Lessing,  Robespierre,  or  Augusta  Comte  and  say,  "They 
are  idealists,"  we  simply  mean  that  they  got  their  idealism 
reduced  to  some  show  of  system ;  that  they  organized, 
taught,  and  published  it.  Their  idealism  is  of  many  shades 
and  textures,  but  it  all  comes  from  the  same  loom,  and 
that  loom  is  human  nature.  Hence  we  all  recognize  cer- 
tain familiar  homelike  strains  in  even  the  most  naive 
statements  of  the  idealist  faith,  even  in  the  crassest  kind 
of  behef  in  a  Direct  Providence.  This  may  justify  the 
broad  principle  of  selection  determining  the  make-up  of 
the  group  of  idealistic  interpreters  of  progress  whose  teach- 
ings are  here  presented.  They  are  not  marked  off  into 
groups  according  to  some  fancied  principle  of  merit,  but  to 
show,  rather  roughly  it  is  true,  the  main  currents  of  ideal- 
istic social  philosophy  during  the  last  two  hundred  years  or 
so.  Since  the  intellectualists  are  cousins  to  the  idealists, 
but  do  not  share  their  transcendentalism,  we  shall  reserve 
their  views  for  a  separate  chapter. 

The  ideahsm  of  certain  great  theologians  will  serve  as  a 
point  of  departure.  Foremost  of  these,  by  reason  of  his 
real  flair  for  historical  analysis  and  coordination,  stands 
Bossuet.  His  great  Discourse  on  Universal  History  was 
really  a  treatise  on  human  progress  according  to  divine 
purpose.  His  point  of  view  is  clearly  set  forth  in  such 
formal  summaries  as  these :  The  revolutions  of  empires 
are  regulated  by  Providence,  and  serve  to  humble  princes ; 
the  whole  preceding  discourse  demonstrates  that  .every- 
thing must  be  ascribed  to  Providence.^  The  basic  plan 
of  the  Discourse  is  set  out  in  its  preface : 

'  Discours  sur  I'histoire  universelle,  Part  III,  ch.  i,  viii.  The  Philosophy  of 
Divine  Right  of  Kings  is  a  variant  of  this  theory;  survdvals  of  it  extend 
through  the  eighteenth  century.     Burke,  for  example,  speaks  of  kings  being 


THE   IDEALISTS  443 

"It  is  the  course  of  these  two  things  —  religion  and 
empire  —  that  you  must  impress  upon  your  memory ; 
and  since  reHgion  and  poHtical  government  are  the  two 
axes  around  which  human  affairs  revolve,  to  see  all  that 
concerns  them  condensed  and  summarized,  and  thus  to 
discover  their  order  and  sequence,  is  to  grasp  all  that  is 
great  among  men,  and  to  hold,  so  to  speak,  the  guiding 
thread  to  all  the  affairs  of  the  universe." 

Later  he  amplifies  this  thought : 

"Thus  all  the  great  empires  of  the  world  we  have  seen 
have  conspired  by  diverse  means  to  the  good  of  religion 
and  the  glory  of  God,  as  God  himself  declared  by  his  proph- 
ets ..  .  God,  then,  who  planned  to  use  the  divers  empires 
to  chastise  or  exercise  or  extend  or  protect  his  people,  wish- 
ing to  reveal  Himself  as  the  author  of  so  admirable  a  course, 
revealed  the  secret  to  his  prophets  and  caused  them  to 
foretell  what  He  had  resolved  to  execute."  ^ 

In  the  last  chapter  he  restates  the  same  idea : 

"But  remember,  My  Lord,  that  this  long  sequence  of 
particular  causes,  which  makes  and  unmakes  empires, 
depends  upon  the  secret  orders  of  Divine  Providence. 
Let  us  speak  no  longer  of  chance  nor  of  fortune,  or  at  least 
only  as  a  name  by  which  to  cover  our  ignorance.  What 
is  chance  according  to  our  uncertain  outlook  is  a  design 
worked  out  in  a  higher  council,  that  is,  in  the  eternal 
wisdom  which  includes  every  cause  and  every  effect  in  the 
same  order."  ^ 

On  the  whole  Bossuet  accepts  the  principle  of  historic 
causality  and  succession,  the  necessary  order  and  sequence 
later   postulated   by   Comte   and   others.     Nations   reach 

hurled  from  their  thrones  by  the  "Supreme  Director  of  this  great  drama," 
etc.  {RejJcctions,  p.  119). 

^  Ibid.,  Part  III,  chap.  i. 

"^  Ibid.,  Part  III,  chap.  viii.  Neo-Catholics  like  Brunetiere  have  re- 
furbished this  idea;  "The  hypothesis  of  Providence,"  he  declares,  "is  the 
condition  of  intelligible  history."  Compare  Devas,  The  Key  to  the  World's 
Progress,  chaps,  i-ii,  etc. 


444  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  level  to  which  they  were  predestined  by  virtue  of  their 
own  qualities  and  characters.  With  only  a  few  extraor- 
dinary exceptions  in  which  God  wished  to  reveal  his  para- 
mount hand,  no  great  historic  change  has  taken  place 
without    proportionate    causes    in    preceding    centuries. 

"And  as  in  all  affairs  there  is  something  which  prepares 
them,  which  determines  the  undertaking  of  them,  and 
which  causes  them  to  succeed,  it  is  the  function  of  the 
real  science  of  history  to  note  in  every  age  those  secret 
impulses  which  have  prepared  the  way  for  great  changes 
and  the  conjunctures  which  have  brought  them  to  pass."  ^ 

This,  as  Comte  pointed  out,  is  the  true  spirit  of  the  philos- 
ophy of  history.  But  it  is  not  science ;  for  it  is  evident 
that  Bossuet  assumed  what  he  started  out  to  prove,  namely, 
history  is  the  record  of  God's  will  among  men.  Even  as  a 
theological  interpretation  of  history  it  is  less  satisfactory 
than  Jonathan  Edwards',  because  less  precise  and  mani- 
festly overloaded  with  apologetics  for  monarchy  and  the 
ecclesiastical  hierarchy. 

The  great  American  theologian  had  a  firm  grasp  on  the 
principle  of  development  toward  perfection  and  urged  it 
with  considerable  vigor.  Baldly  stated,  Edwards  held 
that  God  created  the  universe  for  His  own  pleasure,  and 
that  all  the  movements  of  the  universe  tend  to  culminate 
in  the  full  realization  of  that  divine  pleasure :  the  means 
to  that  pleasure  are  the  various  creatures  he  forms  for  that 
express  purpose.  These  ideas  recur  again  and  again 
throughout  his  theological  writings.     For  example : 

"In  like  manner  we  must  suppose  that  God  before  he 
created  the  world,  had  some  good  in  view,  as  a  consequence 
of  the  world's  existence  that  was  originally  agreeable  to  him 
in  itself  considered  that  inchned  him  to  create  the  world, 
or  bring  the  universe  with    various  intelligent  creatures 

*  Discours  siir  Vhistoire  universelle,  Part  III,  chap.  ii. 


THE  IDEALISTS  445 

into  existence  in  such  a  manner  as  he  created  it  .  .  .  The 
whole  universe  is  a  machine,  which  God  hath  made  for 
his  own  use,  to  be  his  chariot  for  him  to  ride  in.  .  .  .  The 
inferior  part  of  the  creation,  this  visible  universe,  subject 
to  such  continual  changes  and  revolutions  are  the  wheels 
of  the  chariot,  under  the  place  of  the  seat  of  him  who  rides 
in  this  chariot.  God's  providence  in  the  constant  revolu- 
tions, and  alterations,  and  successive  events,  is  represented 
by  the  motions  of  the  wheels  of  the  chariot.  .  .  .  "  ^ 

"Providence  is  like  a  mighty  wheel,  whose  circumference 
is  so  high  that  it  is  dreadful,  with  the  glory  of  the  God  of 
Israel  above  upon  it.  .  .  .  We  have  seen  the  revolution  of 
this  wheel,  and  how  as  it  was  from  God,  so  its  return  has 
been  to  God  again.  All  the  events  of  divine  providence  are 
hke  the  links  of  a  chain :  the  first  link  is  from  God,  and  the 
last  is  to  him.  .  .  .  God's  providence  may  not  unfitly  be 
compared  to  a  large  and  long  river,  having  innumerable 
branches,  beginning  in  different  regions,  and  at  a  great 
distance  one  from  another,  and  all  conspiring  to  one  com- 
mon issue.  .  .  ."  ^ 

"The  new  creation  is  more  excellent  than  the  old.  So 
even  it  is,  that  when  one  thing  is  removed  by  God  to  make 
way  for  another,  the  new  excels  the  old.  .  .  .  The  wheels 
of  Providence  are  not  turned  about  by  blind  chance  but 
they  are  full  of  eyes  round  about,  and  they  are  guided  by 
the  Spirit  of  God.     Where  the  spirit  goes,  they  go."  ^ 

The  end  of  the  flowing  of  a  river  or  of  the  revolution 
of  a  wheel  (Edwards'  two  favorite  metaphors)  or  of  his 
"appointed  journey,"  is  the  salvation  of  his  people,  or  the 
"manifestation  of  his  internal  glory  to  created  understand- 
ings." ^  In  another  place  he  speaks  of  "those  elect  crea- 
tures which  must  be  looked  upon  as  the  end  of  all  the  rest 
of   creation."  ^     Progress   meant,    then,    to    Edwards    the 

^  "Dissertation  concerning  the  end  for  which  God  created  the  world," 
Works,  First  American  edition,  1807,  vol.  vi,  pp.  16,  23-4,  34,  loo-i. 
2  "Work  of  Redemption,"  Works,  ii,  380-1,  382. 
^  Quoted  in  Bancroft,  History  of  the  United  States,  iii,  399. 
*  Works,  vi,  loo-i,  117;  iii,  393- 
^ Ibid.,  vi,  41.     A  forecast  of  Superman? 


446  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

gradual  perfection  of  these  elect.  "All  things  tend  to  him, 
and  in  their  progress  come  nearer  and  nearer  to  him  through 
all  eternity."  ^ 

We  find  somewhat  similar  ideas  in  eighteenth  century 
Germany,  but  stripped  of  their  most  repellant  theological 
trappings.  Lessing,  Herder,  and  Kant  each  voiced  them 
in  his  own  way.  To  Lessing  the  world  is  a  unity  and  its 
history  the  record  of  a  progressive  revelation  in  necessary 
sequences  ;  that  is,  there  is  a  law  in  human  history.  Hu- 
manity passes  through  the  stages  of  childhood,  youth,  and 
on  to  maturity.  Each  of  these  culture  epochs  has  its 
typical  behefs  about  itself  and  its  relation  to  God  as  marks 
of  the  progressive  revelation.  Revelation  is  the  educa- 
tion of  the  race.^  This  revelation  will  inevitably  bring 
man  to  the  fullness  of  perfection.  Exactly  how  and  when 
this  perfection  will  be  achieved  is  a  matter  for  faith  in  powers 
above. 

"Pursue  thy  secret  path,  everlasting  Providence,"  he 
cries,  "only  let  me  not,  because  thou  art  hidden,  despair 
of  thee.  Let  me  not  despair  of  thee  even  if  thy  steps  appear 
to  me  to  retreat.  It  is  not  true  that  the  shortest  line  is 
always  straight."  ^ 

But  in  words  strikingly  reminiscent  of  Edwards  he  seems 
to  suggest  the  individual's  share  in  this  process : 

"What  if  it  were  as  good  as  proved  that  the  great  slow 
wheel  which  brings  the  race  nearer  its  perfection,  received 
its  motion  only  from  smaller,  swifter  wheels  of  which  each 
furnishes  its  individual  share?"* 

In  Herder  we  run  against  a  curious  compound  of  mysti- 
cism and  physical  science.  Man  is  a  summary  of  all  that 
went    before    (inorganic,   plant,   animal) ;    he  is   the  last 

^  Works,  vi,  42. 

^  The  Education  of  the  Human  Race,  sees.  1-2,  54,  etc. 

3  Ibid.,  sec.  91.  ^  Ibid.,  sec.  92. 


THE  IDEALISTS  447 

link  in  the  earth-organization  and  the  first  link  in  a  pro- 
gressively higher  order  of  created  beings ;  i.e.  the  con- 
necting link  between  two  opposing  orders  of  creation, 
the  physical  and  the  spiritual.  This  accounts  for  the 
manifest  dualism  of  our  natures.  The  divine  process 
step  by  step  purifies  and  refines  the  material  and  strips 
it  away  to  make  room  for  the  spiritual,  to  allow  the  buds 
of  man's  spiritual  nature  to  burst  into  full  bloom.^ 

Kant  apparently  was  prompted  to  write  of  progress 
in  answer  to  Moses  Mendelssohn.  The  latter  had  dubbed 
it  mere  illusion  to  hold  "that  the  whole  of  mankind  here 
below  shall  always  move  forward  in  the  course  of  time 
and  thus  perfect  itself."  Kant  contended  that  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  human  race  oscillating  up  and  down,  back 
and  forth,  but  never  getting  anywhere,  would  tire  even 
God.  For  what  at  first  might  be  a  moving  and  instructive 
tragedy,  when  prolonged  becomes  a  farce.  The  hope  of 
better  times  warms  both  individuals  and  nations  for  more 
zealous  efforts  to  improve.  That  effort  to  progress  has 
not  always  succeeded  is  no  proof  that  it  will  never  succeed. 
Since  an  incalculable  time  will  be  necessary,  progress  de- 
pends not  so  much  on  what  we  may  do  of  ourselves  (for 
example,  by  education)  as  on  what  "human  nature  as  such 
will  do  in  and  with  us,  to  compel  us  to  move  in  a  track 
into  which  we  would  not  readily  have  betaken  ourselves." 
Hence  it  is  from  Providence  alone,  the  maker  of  human 
nature,  that  we  can  expect  a  result,  since  men  see  and  act 
only  in  parts  and  do  not  act  in  concord,  while  God  sees 
the  whole.  Yet  it  is  possible  to  theorize  that  to  avoid 
the  evils  of  universal  violence  a  people  may  agree  to  subject 
itself  to  public  law.  War  will  go  on  until  the  cost  of  it 
(national  debts)  will  through  sheer  weakness  bring  about 

'  See  Kant's  Recension  von  J.  G.  Herder's  Ideen  zur  Philosophie  der  Ge- 
schichte  der  Menschheit,  in  Leipzig,  1838,  ed.  of  his  Works,  vol.  iv,  pp.  313-37. 


448  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

what  good  will  ought  to  have  done  but  did  not,  namely, 
peace,  or  progress  in  moral  relations  and  self-maintenance 
by  Right  alone,  not  Force.  This  is  mere  hypothesis, 
however,  says  Kant ;  in  reality  we  must  look  to  Providence 
for  such  a  beneficent  end.^ 

Some  such  general  assumption  runs  also  through  the 
writings  of  the  early  pohtical  economists.  It  is  particu- 
larly clear  in  Adam  Smith.  The  Wealth  of  Nations  with  its 
theory  of  a  harmonious  natural  order  to  be  let  alone  is 
built  upon  the  philosophy  of  life  and  conduct  expressed  in 
his  Moral  Sentiments.  Providence  has  so  adjusted  matters 
that  in  spite  of  the  natural  selfishness  and  rapacity  of  the 
rich  they  are 

"led  by  an  invisible  hand  to  make  nearly  the  same  dis- 
tribution of  the  necessaries  of  life  which  would  have  been 
made  had  the  earth  been  divided  into  equal  portions 
among  all  its  inhabitants,  and  thus,  without  intending  it, 
without  knowing  it,  they  advance  the  interest  of  society 
and  offer  means  for  the   multipKcation  of   the  species." 

Passages  of  this  sort  referring  to  Providence  or  the  Invisible 
Hand  occur  repeatedly  in  the  Moral  Sentiments,  and 
illustrate  that  optimistic  fatalism  whose  children,  the 
complacent  professional  apologists  for  the  existing  order, 
have  so  exasperated  the  open-minded  student  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

Every  theocratic  state,  nominally  at  least,  accepts 
this  providential  view  of  its  history.  Every  petty  tribe 
has  its  god  of  battles,  as  every  Tasmanian  had  his  guardian 
spirit.  In  fact  every  human  group  that  has  attained  a 
measure  of  self-consciousness  appears  to  believe  in  some  sort 
of  Destiny  that  shapes  its  ends.  In  so  far  it  is  idealistic ; 
for  even  if  the  end  toward  which  this  Destiny  is  working  re- 

^  Principles  of  Politics,  including  his  Essay  on  Perpetual  Peace  (ed.  and 
transl.  by  Hastie),  chap.  iii. 


THE   IDEALISTS  449 

mains  remote  and  ill-defined,  yet  hope  and  faith  persistently 
whisper  that  somewhere  and  somehow  or  other  Destiny 
will  bring  things  to  a  bright  and  successful  issue.  But  in 
the  hands  of  theologians  Destiny  is  called  God  and  the 
universe  a  machine  let  down  out  of  high  heaven,  wound 
up  and  set  spinning  for  His  glory.  Men  and  events  are 
wheels  in  the  machine  revolving  according  to  a  minutely 
preestablished  schedule.  Everything  fits.  For  everything 
was  designed  to  fit.  This  concept  received  its  most  classic 
form  in  the  hands  of  the  eighteenth  century  Deists,  in 
Paley's  Natural  Theology,  and  in  the  Bridgewater  Treatises. 
All  that  we  have  to  do  is  to  tick,  tock,  and  all  will  go  well. 
God  is  both  Mover  and  End,  and  he  does  not  scruple  to 
dabble  in  the  pettiest  details  of  domestic  life  or  politics 
to  secure  his  ends.  We  are  the  ignorant  denizens  of  a 
city  ward  who  vote  at  the  beck  and  call  of  our  ward  leader. 
We  are  the  sheep  of  his  hand,  and  we  are  never  anything 
but  sheep  until  —  we  are  transformed  into  the  elect.  In 
the  perpetuum  mobile  of  the  universe  we  are  the  perpetually 
moved.  On  the  other  hand.  Providence  is  a  tinker,  or  as 
Nietzsche  bitterly  said,  "a  domestic  servant,  a  postman, 
an  almanac-maker,  after  all  a  word  for  the  stupidest  kind 
of  accidents."  I  grant  that  the  theologians  denied  vehe- 
mently that  anything  of  this  sort  flowed  from  such  a  con- 
ception of  creation  by  design.  But  if  there  is  any  sense  to 
logic  or  any  standards  for  clear  thinking,  no  other  sequence 
could  follow,^ 

'  It  is  understood  that  theology  might  utilize  any  of  at  least  five  concepts 
of  Providence  :  (i)  God  sits  in  a  world  of  spirit  reality  unconcerned  with  this 
world  of  shadows ;  we  ourselves  have  already  reached  perfection,  the  goal  of 
progress,  but  for  some  mysterious  reason  have  been  placed  in  this  world  of 
shadows.  (2)  God  has  created  man  capable  of  working  out  a  destiny  con- 
templated and  ordained  by  him,  without  his  direct  interference.  (3)  God 
has  created  a  race  of  men  capable  of  arriving  at  some  goal  of  their  own  choos- 
ing, which  neither  he  nor  they  know  yet.  Both  are  aiming,  yet  without 
interfering  with  each  other.     (4)  The  world  is  God,  and  its  striving  after 

2g 


450  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Of  course,  the  two  chief  objections  to  such  an  inter- 
pretation of  history  are,  first,  that  it  cannot  in  any  way 
be  justified  objectively ;  second,  that  it  makes  and  forever 
keeps  man  a  mere  creature,  it  allows  no  measure  of  co- 
operation. The  first  objection  is  formidable  from  the  stand- 
point of  science.  Yet  it  may  not  be  insuperable  from  the 
standpoint  of  common  sense.  For  to  call  anything  intui- 
tional is  not  to  damn  it  eternally.  Indeed,  as  Aristotle 
intimated,  we  may  be  far  safer  in  trusting  our  history  to 
a  poet  than  to  a  historian ;  likewise  it  is  conceivable  that 
the  saint,  even  if  as  in  the  case  of  Jonathan  Edwards  he 
is  at  the  same  time  an  inveterate  theologian,  might  be 
better  trusted  than  the  scientist  to  give  us  that  cosmic 
sweep  of  view  necessary  to  interpret  the  drift  of  Time. 
But  the  second  objection  is  even  more  formidable,  especially 
from  the  moral  point  of  view.  If  it  is  true  that  we  are  the 
slaves  of  beneficent  providence  or  wheels  in  the  divine 
watch,  it  is  better  that  we  should  not  know  it.  It  were 
better  to  maintain  the  illusion  of  freedom  and  cooperation 
in  creation.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  educator  such  an 
interpretation  is  futile,  nay,  suicidal,  and  no  amount  of 
subtle  metaphysics  can  make  him  see  that  it  is  worth  while 
planning  or  executing  schemes  for  social  progress  through 
education.  For  if  man  is  already  perfect  he  needs  no 
education.  And  if  he  is  eternally  a  creature,  education 
is  wasted  on  him.  Here  we  butt  our  heads  against  the 
end  of  a  blind  alley.  That  the  universe  has  some  goal 
is  possible,  though  what  the  precise  design  of  the  One  In- 
finite Mind  is  we  cannot  know.  Of  this  much,  however, 
we  can  be  pretty  certain  :  that  the  goal  is  infinitely  far  off, 
that    infinite    change    and    improvement    must    intervene 

perfection  is  merely  his  attempt  to  reach  complete  self-expression.  (5)  God 
steers  particular  happenings  for  his  own  glory.  The  candid  reader  shall 
decide  for  himself  whether  these  several  concepts  are  of  equal  value  and  also 
which  of  them  is  at  the  basis  of  the  theologies  cited, 


THE   IDEALISTS  45 1 

before  that  far-off  divine  event  could  be  achieved,  and  that 
this  event,  from  the  standpoint  of  this  our  world,  is  con- 
tingent upon  human  action. 

Right  here  comes  philosophy  to  the  rescue,  and  especially 
the  philosophy  of  Hegel.  In  both  Hegel  and  his  contem- 
poraries it  is  still  a  religious  philosophy.  To  Schiller,  W. 
von  Humboldt,  Ranke  and  others  of  their  generation  it 
is  the  idea,  the  world-idea,  or  world-soul,  mystic,  super- 
worldly,  divine,  working  from  without  into  this  world, 
expressing  itself  in  and  directing  human  history,  that  is 
the  motive  force  in  human  progress.     Ranke  said  : 

"It  is  always  the  forces  of  the  living  soul  that  move  the 
world  throughout ;  prepared  through  past  centuries,  they 
manifest  themselves  in  our  times,  called  forth  through 
strong  and  profoundly  spiritual  natures  from  the  unex- 
plored depths  of  the  human  soul ;  it  is  their  very  nature 
to  seek  to  attract  the  world  to  them ;  it  is  moral  energies 
that  we  see  in  evolution."  ^ 

In  Hegel  these  ideas  come  more  clearly  out  of  the  fog 
and  attain  grandiose  stature.  For  him  the  Idea,  and  es- 
pecially the  Idea  of  Freedom,  is  the  motive  force  in  human 
progress.  History  is  simply  the  unfolding  of  ideas.  "Die 
Idee  ist  der  Seelenfiihrer  der  Geschichte."  Mental  and 
spiritual  freedom  is  its  final  goal.  It  is  all  but  hopeless 
to  attempt  in  brief  compass  to  give  even  the  most  super- 
ficial gluTipse  of  how  Hegel  works  out  this  magnificent 
thesis,  but  the  attempt  must  be  made. 

The  drama  of  history  is  to  Hegel  essentially  a  develop- 
ment. Man  is  its  subject ;  Nature  merely  the  super- 
ficial stage-setting.  The  real  stage  is  in  the  human  will 
and  knowledge.  The  drama  is  neither  tragedy  nor  comedy. 
Nor  is  it  that  sort  of  disordered  stage-play  dreamed  by  Poe, 
wherein 

^  Quoted  by  Schmoller,  Gnmdriss,  ii,  660. 


452  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

"The  play  was  the  tragedy  Man, 
The  Hero  the  Conqueror  Worm." 

Nor  is  it  the  tale  of  a  monarch  of  all  he  surveys.  No,  to 
Hegel  the  story  is  not  of  man's  conquest  by  nature,  nor  of 
his  conquest  over  nature,  but  of  his  transformation  and  sub- 
jugation of  himself.  Self-knowledge,  self-mastery,  these 
are  its  themes.  Man  at  the  outset  is  a  spiritual  being,  but 
his  spirituality  assumes  rather  the  form  of  instinct.  His- 
tory is  the  narrative  of  his  winning  conscious  reason,  his 
spiritual  majority. 

"Universal  History  is  the  unfolding  of  the  Spiritual 
Being  in  time,  as  Nature  is  the  unfolding  of  the  divine  idea 
in  space.  .  .  .  History  is  progress  in  the  consciousness  of 
freedom." 

And  the  end  of  history  is  the  "consciousness  of  spiritual 
freedom,  and  with  it  the  realization  of  that  freedom." 
History  is  a  hope  and  an  advance  —  irregular  and  fumbling 
sometimes  —  toward  an  ideal,  that  is,  resemblance  to  God. 
"God  rules  the  world:  the  substance  of  His  rule,  the 
execution  of  His  plan,  is  the  world's  history."  "What 
has  happened,  and  is  happening  every  day,  is  not  only 
not  'without  God,'  but  is  essentially  His  work."  This 
seems  to  plunge  us  back  into  our  theological  cul-de-sac. 
But  not  quite :  for  God  is  not  outside  the  historic  process, 
but  in  it.  And  man  is  co-worker  with  God  —  sometimes 
willful,  unconscious,  rebellious,  yet  growing  constantly 
more  obedient  as  he  learns  his  own  nature  and  origin.  It 
follows  that  progress  in  the  consciousness  of  freedom  is 
progress  in  man's  consciousness  of  God,  and  the  highest 
freedom  of  the  will  is  to  will  the  Will  of  God. 

Particular  historic  events  or  forces  exist  by  virtue  of  the 
particular  wills  of  individuals  or  groups,  but  the  grace  of 
God  confers  upon  them  a  character  beyond  what  their 


THE  IDEALISTS  453 

authors  intended.  The  means  whereby  the  process  or 
end  of  history  is  realized  are  the  passions  of  men,  their 
individual  interests  and  the  actions  by  which  they  strive 
to  secure  them  —  in  a  word,  their  subjective  choices. 
Progress,  therefore,  is  a  matter  of  the  will.  Even  where 
these  choices  seemed  in  the  past  dark  and  bloody,  God 
made  the  wrath  of  men  to  praise  Him.  In  the  approach 
to  universal  self-knowledge  and  unity,  human  self-disci- 
pline has  cooperated  with  providential  guidance.  Hegel 
makes  much  of  the  share  of  human  endeavor  and  struggle 
in  this  process.  Great  men  lead  the  struggle.  But  the 
great  man  is  only  he  who  comprehends  the  spirit  of  his 
time  and  becomes  its  organ.  He  can  do  so  only  because 
he  sees  that  his  time  is  ripe.  Of  himself  he  can  do  nothing. 
He  is  an  instrument  for  working  out  the  logic  of  events : 
for  the  history  of  progress  is  a  problem  in  logic.  Every 
positive  affirmation  contains  in  it  a  potential  negation. 
Applied  to  history  this  principle  emphasizes  the  fact  that 
every  institution  or  form  into  which  the  Idea  casts  itself 
bears  within  it  the  elements  which  will  in  time  burst  it, 
permitting,  yes  forcing,  the  Idea  to  clothe  itself  anew. 
Hence  the  notion  seized  upon  by  scientific  evolutionists, 
namely,  that  progress  proceeds  by  fixed  steps :  there  can 
be  no  repetition.  Marx  and  his  disciples  applied  this  prin- 
ciple to  their  theory  of  an  inexorable  sequence  of  economic 
and  other  social  institutions.  But  to  Hegel  the  whole 
process  was  an  inexorable  ethical  evolution.  The  subject 
matter  of  history  is  law — -an  ethical  element.  Hence 
the  whole  labor  of  history  is  to  turn  this  at  first  abstract 
and  only  potential  ethical  principle  into  a  concrete  order, 
a  real  Ethical  World. 

In  the  process  of  self-realization  which  is  the  essence 
of  human  civilization,  man  is  not,  however,  out  of  touch 
with  nature.     He  reduces  what  he  needs  of  it  for  his  own 


454  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

purposes,  and  avoids  troublesome  conflicts  beyond  that 
point.  Hence  the  compromise  which  Hegel  seems  to  offer 
between  geographic   determinism   and   absolute  idealism. 

The  general  theory  of  Hegel  is  engaging  enough.  It 
commends  itself  to  the  swelling  imagination  of  men.  It 
offers  hope  and  confers  a  dignity  upon  us  all.  For  are  we 
not  collaborators  with  the  Infinite  in  the  creation  of  an 
Ethical  World?  But  the  details  which  Hegel  musters 
by  way  of  facts  to  support  his  general  thesis  are  not  so 
convincing.  He  divides  world  history  into  four  great 
periods  or  types,  Oriental,  Greek,  Roman,  Germanic. 
The  Orient  represents  the  childhood  of  history  —  the 
rudimentary  concept  of  freedom  as  a  spiritual  attribute, 
as  an  "abstract  universal."  At  this  stage  only  monarchs 
disengage  themselves  from  the  mass  and  are  free.  Greece 
represents  the  age  of  youth  —  freedom  not  yet  a  ''concrete 
universal";  some  only  are  free.  Rome  was  the  age  of 
manhood.  Individuality  was  recognized  only  formally 
by  law  as  exemplified  in  the  ascription  of  specific  "personal 
rights."  It  is  left  to  the  Germanic  world  under  the  in- 
spiration of  Christianity  to  take  the  step  into  full  maturity. 
Its  mission  is  to  comprehend  and  carry  out  the  truth  that 
freedom  is  the  birthright  of  all  men.  Politically,  then, 
the  movement  passes  from  absolutism  to  democracy; 
socially  from  subordination  by  status  to  individualism 
and  self-subordination  to  an  ethical  ideal. 

Philosophy  of  history  is  quite  out  of  fashion  nowadays, 
and  it  is  as  much  as  one's  scientific  reputation  is  worth  to 
treat  it  with  seriousness  and  dignified  respect.  And  what 
scientific  martyrdoms  must  he  undergo  who  not  only 
respects  but  actually  embraces,  even  in  part !  Neverthe- 
less all  things  considered,  Hegel  has  given  us  at  least  four 
permanent  and  irrefragable  elements  in  any  convincing 
theory    of    progress.     First,    there    is    progress.     Second, 


THE  IDEALISTS  455 

progress  docs  not  repeat  itself  nor  go  back  on  its  tracks. 
Third,  progress  is  a  matter  of  ideas  or  ideals  in  the  direc- 
tion of  a  soundly  ethical  world.  Finally,  progress  is  a 
movement  of  the  human  will.  Hence  we  ought  to  be  able 
to  conclude  that  progress  may  be  willed  as  the  will  is  il- 
luminated and  disciplined  through  social  experience  and 
sound  teachings.  These  principles  may  be  disengaged 
from  their  theological  matrix  without  serious  loss.  Thus 
divested  they  stand  as  a  seven-leagued  step  between  the 
somber  theologizing  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  and  recent  attempts  at  a  scientific  formulation 
of  the  principle  of  progress. 

Parallel  to  this  philosophic  idealism  of  Hegel  and  his 
school  runs  what  might  be  called  the  sociological  idealism 
of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  cropping  out 
particularly  in  the  work  of  St.  Simon,  Comte,  and  J.  S.  Mill. 
St.  Simon  propounds  a  half  philosophical,  half  economic 
solution  to  the  riddle  of  social  evolution.  He  finds  the 
key  to  social  advance  not  in  political  forms  but  in  the 
history  of  economic  forms  (property,  classes,  etc.),  and  in 
the  history  of  ideas ;  for,  he  declared,  every  social  system 
is  founded  on  a  philosophy.  Similarly,  Proudhon  in  his 
Philo Sophie  du  Pr ogres  makes  progress  a  moral  question, 
calls  it  the  natural  state  of  humanity,  and  makes  Justice 
the  strongest  of  all  its  conflicting  causes.  The  socialist- 
materiahst  group  of  the  thirties  and  forties  seized  the 
first  half  of  St.  Simon's  teachings.  Auguste  Comte  ap- 
propriated the  other  half  and  turned  its  vague  suggestions 
into  a  mammoth  system,  the  Positive  Philosophy,  from 
which  modern  sociology  dates  its  advent. 

Comte  makes  progress  an  evolution  of  ideas  from  super- 
stition to  positive  knowledge.  For  him  the  history  of  so- 
ciety is  ruled  by  the  history  of  the  human  mind.  This 
history  divides  itself  according  to  the  Law  of  the  Three 


456  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Stages,  into  three  great  epochs  or  stages,  the  theological, 
metaphysical,  and  positive.  In  the  theological  stage  a 
phenomenon  is  regarded  as  explained  when  it  is  attributed 
to  the  will  of  a  being  or  god  powerful  enough  to  produce 
it.  Fetishism  and  divine  right  of  kings  are  typical  beliefs 
of  this  period.  The  metaphysical  age  is  characterized  by 
explaining  phenomena  through  abstractions  personified, 
i.e.,  by  general  principles  to  which  all  things  are  presumed 
to  be  subject.  Such  shibboleths  as  social  contract  and 
popular  sovereignty  are  illustrations.  (Might  we  not 
add  "natural  selection"  and  "survival  of  the  fittest"?) 
The  third  or  positive  stage  of  history  has  barely  dawned, 
for  it  is  the  era  of  empiric  science,  the  age  of  laws  deduced 
from  large  numbers  of  concrete  facts.  Throughout,  Comte 
fights  shy  of  metaphysics,  yet  inevatably  falls  into  meta- 
physicking  of  his  own  particular  brand.  And  he  also  con- 
structed a  set  of  historical  facts  that  bear  out  his  Sequence 
but  follow  real  history  just  about  as  closely  as  a  Greek 
mask  fitted  the  actor  beneath.  From  his  masters  Mon- 
tesquieu, Condorcet,  De  Maistre,  and  St.  Simon,  Comte 
gathered  the  ideas  of  progress  and  perfectibility.  It  re- 
mained for  him  to  stamp  this  idea  with  the  seal  of  a  neces- 
sary law  to  lay  the  basis  for  his  system.  For  progress  is 
no  hit-or-miss  affair.  It  is  inevitable.  There  are  definite 
rungs  of  the  historical  ladder  to  be  climbed,  and  none  can 
be  avoided.  Neither  can  there  be  retrogressions  nor 
repetitions.  Rapidity  in  cUmbing  is  alone  susceptible 
of  variation.  The  various  social  institutions  may  contrib- 
ute to  hasten  or  retard  the  process. 

Neither  is  progress  aimless  nor  colorless.  It  stretches 
toward  the  goal  of  social  well-being,  the  harmony  and 
perfection  of  the  only  individual  worth  considering,  namely, 
Humanity.  To  be  sure,  Comte  disclaimed  any  metaphys- 
ical notion  of  progress  as  continuous  perfection.     He  pro- 


THE  IDEALISTS  457 

fessed  faith  only  in  development.  But  withal  he  was 
steeped  in  the  telic  view  of  science.  Sociology  was  not  a 
mere  academic  pastime  but  supremely  practical.  It  was 
an  exact  science  whose  business  is  to  point  the  way  to  human 
welfare.  His  whole  positive  philosophy  is  dominated  by 
a  moral  and  social  passion.  Savoir  pour  prevoir  et  connattre 
pour  ameliorer.  The  moral  aim  of  his  system  comes  out 
best  of  all  in  his  doctrine  of  the  organic  unity  of  mankind 
and  in  his  emphasis  upon  altruism.  Man  is  not  sufficient 
unto  himself;  he  is  part  of  a  whole,  in  and  of  which  and 
for  which  he  must  live.  Vivre  pour  autrui,  he  sets  up  as  a 
new  positive  and  scientific  sanction  to  replace  the  older 
religious  and  moral  sanctions  derived  from  the  twilight 
which  preceded  the  dawn  of  the  social  sciences.  ''With  all 
our  efforts,  the  longest  life  well  employed  will  never  en- 
able us  to  pay  back  more  than  an  imperceptible  part  of 
what  we  have  received." 

With  Comte  as  with  Hegel  the  spirit  of  his  philosophy 
is  more  acceptable  than  the  letter.  For  the  letter  is  some- 
times grotesquely  wide  of  the  truth.  The  Positive  Phi- 
losophy may  be,  as  its  critics  insist,  only  philosophy  of  his- 
tory once  more  and  in  no  sense  either  historical  or  scientific, 
or  an  accurate  concept  of  progress.^  Yet  it  gave  an  impetus 
to  all  successive  steps  in  the  science  of  society  and  yielded 
three  sofid  principles :  (i)  The  organic  relation  of  the 
individual  to  his  fellows  {11  ne  faut  pas  definir  Vhumanile 
par  VJiomme,  mats  au  contraire,  Vhomme  par  rhumanite) ; 
(2)  the  duty  of  altruism  ;  and  (3)  the  definite  effect  of  social 
institutions  in  accelerating  or  retarding  progress.  Ac- 
cepting these,  we  may  do  as  we  will  about  the  idea  of 
progress  as  a  necessary  law,  and  we  may  reject  utterly  the 

^  See  for  example,  Crozier's  criticism  that  in  his  zeal  for  order  Comte 
strangled  the  chief  hope  of  progress,  individual  expansion  and  development. 
{Civilization  and  Progress,  142-4.) 


45^  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

law  of  the  three  stages  as  a  literal  and  correct  interpre- 
tation of  history.  That  we  are  correct  in  linking  Comte 
with  other  ideahsts  is  apparent  when  we  recall  that  he 
made  the  heart  the  impelling  force  in  development.  On 
the  whole,  then,  we  come  from  an  examination  of  Comte 
to  substantially  the  point  where  we  left  Hegel ;  namely, 
progress  is  essentially  moral  and  it  is,  or  may  be, 
willed. 

One  of  the  most  straight-away  and  brilliant  defenses 
of  the  idealistic  view  of  history  that  ever  appeared  occurs 
in  Mr.  G.  Lowes  Dickinson's  Justice  and  Liberty,  A  Political 
Dialogue.  In  addition  to  being  a  piece  of  magnificent 
EngHsh  prose  it  sweeps  the  reader  along  by  the  power, 
the  very  audacity,  of  its  emphasis  upon  the  spiritual  factors 
in  human  development.  I  call  it  prose  only  because  of 
its  form ;  for  in  substance  it  is  lyric  rhapsody.  But  to 
be  lyrical  is  not  necessarily  to  be  fallacious,  any  more  than 
to  be  dull  is  to  be  scholarly  or  truthful. 

Mr.  Dickinson  is  answering  his  conservative  opponent's 
claim  that  ideals  are  not  cause,  but  effect ;  not  an  inspira- 
tion, but  a  pretense.  He  begins  by  showing  how  man  has 
subdued  an  inhospitable  Nature,  and  how  the  brutality 
of  Nature  evoked  the  will  and  the  intelligence  of  man.  Yet 
many  possibihties  of  science  and  invention  are  still  at  the 
mercy  of  Nature  and  cannot  be  hastened  to  birth  nor  re- 
tarded by  mere  effort  of  the  will ;  because  "hazard  and  chaos 
are  within  us  no  less  than  without."  On  the  other  hand, 
while  man  cannot  control  the  conjuncture  of  genius  with 
opportunity  he  can  prepare  or  neglect  to  meet  it  when  it 
comes :  and  the  means  of  thus  making  or  marring  fate 
are  his  institutions.  "Human  institutions  ...  all  through 
history  have  thwarted  rather  than  aided  the  conjuncture 
of  genius  with  chance."  These  human  institutions  are 
largely  an  inheritance  from  pre-human  hairy  biped  days. 


THE  IDEALISTS  459 

Man's  history  is  the  tale  of  his  disentanglement  from  these 
bestial  institutions  and  the  creation  of  others  more  be- 
fitting him. 

"This  animal,  Man,  this  poor  thin  wisp  of  sodden  straw 
buffeted  on  the  great  ocean  of  fate,  this  ignorant,  feeble, 
quarrelsome,  greedy,  cowardly  victim  and  spawn  of  the 
unnatural  parent  we  call  Nature,  this  abortion,  this  clod, 
this  indecent,  unnamable  thing,  is  also,  as  certainly,  the 
child  of  a  celestial  father.  Sown  into  the  womb  of  Nature, 
he  was  sown  a  spiritual  seed.  And  history,  on  one  side 
the  record  of  man's  entanglement  in  matter,  on  the  other 
is  the  epic  of  his  self-deliverance.  All  the  facts,  the  dread- 
ful facts  at  which  we  have  timidly  hinted,  and  which  no 
man  could  fairly  face  and  live,  all  those  facts  are  true ; 
stop  at  them  if  you  will !  But  true  also  is  the  contest  of 
which  they  are  the  symbol,  real  the  flood  no  less  then  the 
deposit  it  has  left :  real,  of  all  things  reallest,  the  ideal ! 
Do  not  conceive  it  as  an  idea  in  somebody's  head.  No ! 
ideas  are  traces  it  leaves,  shadows,  images,  words :  itself 
is  the  light,  the  fire,  the  tongue,  of  which  these  are  creatures. 
Poetry,  philosophy,  art,  religion,  what  you  will,  are  but 
its  expressions ;  they  are  not  It.  Thought  is  a  key  to 
unlock  its  prison,  words  are  a  vessel  to  carry  its  seed.  But 
It  is  Reality  of  Realities,  fact  of  facts,  force  of  forces.  It 
refutes  demonstration ;  it  unsettles  finality ;  it  defies 
experience.  While  all  men  are  crying  "impossible,"  it  has 
sped  and  done.  Even  in  those  who  deny  it,  it  lies  a  latent 
spark :  let  them  beware  the  conflagration  when  the  wind 
of  the  spirit  blows!" 

This  out-Hegels  Hegel.  It  soars  almost  recklessly  into 
the  absolute  with  all  the  ecstasy  of  a  Plotinus.  Its  Delphic 
incoherence  is  all  but  intoxicating.  He  feels  this  himself 
and  proceeds  less  rhetorically  to  the  conclusion  that  man 
is  both  brute  and  spirit,  that  history  is  both  a  sordid  chron- 
icle of  crime  and  a  solemn  school  of  righteousness.  It  is 
natural  to  fall  into  pessimism  if  one  merely  chronicles 
the  meannesses  and  idiocies  of  his  fellows,  or  the  swarming 


460  THEORIES  OF  SOCE\L  PROGRESS 

fears  and  weaknesses  within  ourselves ;  it  is  impossible 
under  such  an  obsession  to  believe  that  the  ideal  is  anything 
more  than  an  idea;  to  attribute  power  to  it  seems  idle. 
But  this  is  only  a  superficial  aspect  of  truth.  Those  who 
look  closer  find  a  sap  flowing  through  the  dead  wood  of 
human  nature,  and  a  fire  burning  at  the  heart  of  the  world. 
That  is  the  ideal,  the  greatest  of  all  energies,  though  world- 
lings call  it  a  mere  dream. ^ 

But  where  shall  we  look  for  ideals?  Industrial  forces 
cannot,  as  the  sociahsts  think,  independently  of  human 
choice  dehver  "from  the  womb  of  class-war  a  babe  of 
fraternity  and  peace."  Ideals  do  not  come  as  the  gentle 
rain  from  heaven  nor  as  cosmic  crises,  like  the  Lisbon 
earthquake.  No,  says  Mr.  Dickinson ;  if  an  ideal  is  to 
result,  an  ideal  must  he  willed.  Here  we  come  to  earth 
again  after  our  long  lyric  flight  and  find  ourselves  once 
more  in  the  company  of  Hegel  and  Comte,  having 
gained  meanwhile  a  new  sense  of  exhilaration  and  piety, 
with  which  to  strengthen  their  halting  science  and  phi- 
losophy. 

I  have  reserved  for  briefer  mention  two  other  typical 
attitudes  toward  the  ideological  concept  of  history,  those, 
namely,  of  the  socialist  and  the  pessimist.  It  is  true,  as 
we  have  already  seen,  that  most  of  the  Marxian  socialists 
lay  great  stress  on  the  economic  basis  of  ideals.  But  some 
of  Marx's  followers,  for  example,  Bernstein,  either  tacitly 
or  openly  recognize  ideological  forces  in  social  evolution. 
And  all  the  so-called  philosophical  socialists  like  Jules 
Guesde  urge  the  fundamental  importance  of  ideals.  H. 
G.  Wells  as  a  Fabian  Socialist  insisted  that  there  can  be 
no  change  in  social  institutions  without  change  in  ideas. 
Signor  Ferri,  positivist,  sociaHst,  supposed  materialist, 
and  homme  de  politique,  is  not  to  be  outdone. 

^Op.  cii.,  pp.  222-32. 


THE   IDEALISTS  46 1 

"Of  course,"  he  writes,  "we  positivists  know  very  well 
that  the  material  requirements  of  life  shape  and  determine 
also  the  moral  and  intellectual  aims  of  human  conscious- 
ness. But  positive  science  declares  the  following  to  be 
the  indispensable  requirement  for  the  regeneration  of  human 
ideals :  without  an  ideal,  neither  an  individual  nor  a  col- 
lectivity can  live,  without  it  humanity  is  dead  or  dying. 
For  it  is  the  fire  of  an  ideal  which  renders  the  life  of  each 
one  of  us  possible,  useful,  and  fertile.  And  only  by  its  help 
can  each  one  of  us,  in  the  more  or  less  short  course  of  his 
or  her  existence,  leave  behind  traces  for  the  benefit  of 
fellow-beings."  ^ 

This  sounds  mightily  like  an  heroic  attempt  to  marry 
the  ideal  to  the  material ;  but  it  is  no  less  significant  as  a 
testimonial  to  the  undying  fact  that  one  man  or  the  whole 
of  humanity  can  live  or  have  a  history  only  as  they  build 
and  cleave  to  an  ideal.  This  irrepressible  tendency  of  men 
of  vision  is  a  striking  hint  that  man  is  essentially  spirit 
and  that  his  history  is  a  spiritual  record. 

The  passionate  defense  of  Utopias  by  Anatole  France 
and  by  Oscar  Wilde  must  stand  as  final  proof  that  socialism 
is  not  necessarily  limited  to  class  struggle  and  surplus- 
value.  I  heard  M.  France  once  urge  the  students  of  Paris 
not  to  be  afraid  of  Utopias,  but  to  cherish  them,  to  pursue 
them,  to  devote  their  lives  to  them.  His  own  life  is  an 
example  of  how  a  social  ideal,  the  passion  for  fellow-men, 
may  give  poise  and  center  to  a  hitherto  somewhat  dilettante 
sort  of  existence,  and  may  yield  a  new  dignity  and  com- 
pelling power  to  literary  art.  He  found  himself  when 
he  found  an  ideal,  a  cause.  A  good  deal  of  Oscar  Wilde's 
work  was  the  purest  sort  of  anarchistic  estheticism.  But 
on  one  occasion  at  least  his  voice  rang  out  true  and  sincere. 

"A  map  of  the  world  that  does  not  include  Utopia," 
he  cries,  "is  not  worth  even  glancing  at,  for  it  leaves  out 

^  Positive  School  of  Criminology,  6. 


462  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  one  country  at  which  Humanity  is  always  landing. 
And  when  Humanity  lands  there,  it  looks  out,  and,  seeing 
a  better  country,  sets  sail.  Progress  is  the  realization  of 
Utopias."  1 

Henrik  Ibsen  has  been  frequently  maligned  for  his  pre- 
sumed indomitable  pessimism  and  for  his  slashing  war- 
fare upon  ideals.  Yet  he  it  was  who  declared  that  "what 
is  wanted  is  a  revolution  of  the  spirit  of  man."  In  his 
doctoral  address  at  Upsala,  in  1877,  he  said  : 

"It  has  been  asserted  on  various  occasions  that  I  am  a 
pessimist.  So  I  am  to  this  extent  — that  I  do  not  believe 
human  ideals  to  be  eternal.  But  I  am  also  an  optimist, 
for  I  believe  firmly  in  the  power  of  those  ideals  to  propagate 
and  develop." 

The  proof  of  his  sincerity  on  this  occasion  is  the  never- 
wavering  conviction  that  the  function  of  his  plays,  and  of 
all  drama  for  that  matter,  was  to  aid  in  social  progress  by 
leveHng  a  piercing  and  if  need  be  a  destructive  criticism 
at  erroneous  ideals  and  by  replacing  them  with  newer 
and  truer  ones.  Hence  his  dictum  that  neither  our  moral 
conceptions  nor  our  artistic  forms  have  an  eternity  before 
them,  was  not  the  mere  fling  of  a  relativist  in  philosophy ; 
it  was  a  dedication  of  himself  and  all  his  powers  to  the 
service  of  humanity  through  the  purification  of  ideals.  It 
was  a  striking  justification  of  the  concept  of  history  as  one 
long  process  of  creating  an  ideal,  adoring  it,  destroying  it. 
The  limits  of  this  chapter  will  allow  only  the  briefest 
reference  to  other  statements  of  the  ideahst  position.  To 
a  group  of  American  philosophers,  progress  is  essentially 
the  development  of  new  and  higher  moral  imperatives, 
i.e.,  new  moral  values,  new  ideals.^  To  a  notable  American 
scientist  it  is  idealism  alone  which  civilizes  : 

^  The  Soul  of  Man  Under  Socialism,  28. 

"^  See  the  discussions  of  Royce,  Baldwin,  and  White  in  the  Internatl.  Jour. 
Ethics,  5  :  489-500 ;   6  :  93-7,  99. 


THE   IDE/VLISTS  463 

"That  which  is  purely  practical,  containing  no  element 
of  idealism,  may  sustain  existence  and  to  that  extent  be 
valuable,  but  it  does  not  civilize.  I  believe  it  is  the  idealism 
of  pure  knowledge,  the  idealism  in  applied  knowledge, 
the  idealism  in  industry  and  commerce,  the  idealism  in 
literature  and  art,  the  idealism  in  personal  religion,  which 
leavens  the  life  of  the  world  and  pushes  forward  the  bound- 
aries of  civilization."  ^ 

1  must  confess  that  while  the  cosmic  sweep  of  idealistic 
formulas  moves  me  profoundly,  those  formulae  themselves 
are  as  a  rule  so  highly  generalized  that  I  do  not  know  which 
way  to  turn.  That  I  should  turn  somewhere  is  evident 
if  we  accept  the  Hegelian  view  that  man  must  cooperate 
with  the  Infinite  in  working  out  his  destiny.  The  ideal 
is  too  vague,  so  vague  as  to  draw  the  lightning  flash  re- 
proach that  all  ideals  are  illusions.-  When  I  am  told  that 
society  does  not  move  on  to  better  things  by  thought  and 
reasoning  and  knowledge  of  its  path  but  "by  the  impulse 
of  a  sound  life,  with  faith  in  the  ideal  for  its  guide,"  ^ 
the  reproach  seems  justified.  Ideals  to  motivate  conduct 
must  be  more  or  less  specific.  Moreover  it  must  be  recog- 
nized that  in  practical  affairs  the  temporary  expedient 
has  a  nasty  way  of  electing  itself  to  a  seat  among  the 
Eternal  Verities.  At  any  rate,  the  Ideal,  if  it  is  to  func- 
tion progress- ward,  must  be  stripped  of  its  capital  letters 
and  be  translated  into  terms  of  concrete  reality,  with  due 
reference  to  means  as  well  as  ends.     The  only  ideal  that 

^  W.  W.  Campbell,  Presidential  Address  to  the  Amer.  Assoc,  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science,  1915,  printed  in  Science,  42  :  238 ;  cf.  Newcomb,  Side- 
lighls  on  Astronomy,  chap,  xx  ;  Wells,  New  Worlds  for  Old,  chap.  ii. 

2  Recall  Sumner,  Folkways,  201  :  "  An  ideal  is  entirely  unscientific.  It  is  a 
phantasm  which  has  little  or  no  connection  with  fact."      And  Carver  sneers  : 

Where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish.'  They  likewise  perish  where 
there  is  a  vision.  It  has  not  yet  been  statistically  determined  whether 
they  perish  faster  in  the  one  case  or  in  the  other."  Essays  in  Social 
Justice,  232. 

^  Urwick,  A  Philosophy  of  Social  Progress,  286. 


464  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

is  of  much  permanent  value  to  human  society  is  the  vision 
of  a  social  organization  which  will  permit  the  highest  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  at  the  minimum  cost.  Such 
an  ideal  can  actually  be  broken  up  into  particular  ideals, 
themselves  translatable  into  working  programs.  Suppose 
you  call  the  summarizing  ideal,  social  justice  :  it  can  parti- 
tion itself  into  the  fields  of  pure  science,  applied  science, 
art,  rehgion,  politics,  industry,  what  you  will. 

Our  argument  has  led  us  again  inevitably  to  the  point 
reached  in  other  chapters.  In  order  to  form  ideals  that  are 
something  more  than  fads,  crotchets,  lusts,  or  moonshine, 
a  large  body  capable  of  thinking  clearly  and  persistently 
is  essential.  No  matter  whether  you  call  your  ideal  Jus- 
tice or  Freedom  or  Morality  or  Absolute  Science,  how  else 
can  you  achieve  it  or  even  start  toward  it  without  minds 
purged  and  disciplined  ?  In  other  words,  ideals,  like  public 
opinion  or  leadership  or  government  or  any  other  element 
in  social  advance,  presuppose  inexorably  education,  op- 
portunity, the  increase  of  exact  knowledge  and  its  trans- 
mutation into  conduct.  The  transcendentahsts  in  the  final 
issue  must  rest  their  case  with  the  intellectualists.  We 
shall  hear  them  next. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 
THE   INTELLECTUALISTS 


The  intellectualist  interpretation  of  progress  must  be 
able  to  solve  a  handful  of  closely  related  problems.  First, 
how  much  power  have  thought,  ideas,  knowledge  and 
reason  compared  with  instinct  or  emotion  in  human  be- 
havior? Second,  how  can-  knowledge  function  pro- 
gressively for  morality  and  justice?  Third,  what  kind  of 
knowledge  is  best  calculated  to  develop  the  intellectual 
life?  The  last  problem  summarizes  the  others  from  the 
standpoint  of  practical  policy  :  it  is,  how  can  society  assure 
itself  of  an  increasing  reservoir  of  this  vital  knowledge? 

While  casting  away  utterly  the  cloak  of  mysticism 
which  we  have  seen  enveloped  the  theologians  and  trans- 
cendentalists,  the  role  of  ideas  in  social  progress  is  warmly 
espoused  by  Mill  and  Buckle.  In  them  the  doctrine  takes 
on  more  of  an  intellectualist  color.  Increase  of  knowledge 
is  the  predominant  force  in  human  advance.  This  doctrine 
is  not  original  with  them.  Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle,  and 
Bacon  had  announced  it ;  Condorcet  and  Francis  Wright 
made  it  the  basis  of  their  teachings.  Coleridge  likewise 
treated  all  history  as  an  education  of  the  mind  of  the  race.^ 
Lessing  had  seized  upon  the  same  concept  in  terms  of  stages 
of  a  Divine  Plan  for  the  Education  of  the  Human  Race. 

But  to  Buckle  is  due  the  most  elaborate  exposition  of  this 

1  Friend,  vol.  iii,  Essay  lo. 
2h  465 


466  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

view  of  history.     He  accords  to  climatic  and  geographical 
influences  certain  conditioning  powers  over  human  develop- 
ment, as  we  have  already  seen.     Hence  civilization  thrives 
in  moderate  climates  where  nature  is  less  helpful  but  not 
quite  adverse.     Here  population  will  be  less  redundant,  and 
here  knowledge  may  be  stored  up  and  turned  into  fruitful 
progress,  material  and  intellectual.     Here  civilization  will 
be    governed    mainly    by    intellectual    laws.     Progress    in 
civilization    is    determined    by    two    factors,    moral    and 
intellectual ;   or  perhaps  we  should  better  say  the  twofold 
test    of   civilization   is   moral   and   intellectual    elevation. 
Which,  then,  of  these  two  is  the  prime  mover?     Buckle 
clears  the  way  by  denying  that  there  has  been  any  perma- 
nent improvement  in  the  moral  or  intellectual  faculties  of 
man,  or  that  these  faculties  are  likely  to  be  greater  in  an 
infant  born  in  the  most  civilized  part  of  Europe,  than  in  one 
born  in  the  wildest  region  of  a  barbarous  country.     Note 
the  word  faculties.     Buckle  here  sweeps  away  all  arbitrary 
racial  distinctions.     We  are  all  set  down  on  one  immense 
plane    of    equality    of    capacity.     Progress    then    resolves 
itself,   not   into  a  progress  of  natural   capacity,   but  into 
progress    of    opportunity,    of    external    advantage.      Now 
moral  motives,  he  claims,  have  exercised  extremely  little 
influence  over  the  progress  of  civilization,  for  moral  truths 
are  stationary,  little  subject  to  modification.     By  contrast, 
the  progressive  aspect  of  intellectual  truths  is  startling. 
The  intellectual  element  is  not  only  far  more  progressive 
than  the  moral  principle,  but  is  also  far  more  permanent 
in  its  results.     Intellectual  gains  are  more  easily  collected, 
preserved,  and  transmitted  than  are  the  good  products  of 
the  moral  faculties.^ 

^  Cf.  Patten,  Survey,  July  5,  1913,  p.  469 :  "When  a  canal  is  dug  or  the 
mosquito  excluded,  the  environment  is  altered  for  all  time.  But  a  character 
change  spreads  slowly  from  person  to  person,  and  must,  to  remain  effective, 
be  incorporated  into  the  social  tradition  and  handed  on  to  each  generation." 


THE  INTKLLIXTUALISTS  467 

As  a  typical  example  of  the  contrast  between  morality  and 
intelligence  in  their  application  to  national  character  and 
history,  he  selects  war.  War  is  the  expression  of  unin- 
telligence  and  backwardness.  One  of  its  forms,  persecution, 
is  frequently  the  direct  result  of  a  moral  code  desperately 
espoused.  Hence  militarism  is  not  immorality  but  in- 
tellectual density.  Russia,  for  instance,  is  a  warlike  coun- 
try, not  because  its  inhabitants  are  immoral,  but  because 
they  are  unintellectual.'  The  step  from  the  ancient  era 
of  war  to  the  modern  more  peaceful  and  industrial  age  was 
a  tremendous  advance:  how  did  it  come  to  pass?  "The 
warlike  spirit  of  the  ancient  world  has  been  weakened  by 
the  progress  of  European  knowledge."  In  three  ways,  or 
by  three  notable  discoveries :  First,  the  invention  of  gun- 
powder, which  brought  with  it  new  and  expensive  engines 
of  war,  created  a  special  war  class,  the  standing  army ; 
this  released  the  great  majority  of  the  population  for 
productive  enterprises,  and  weaned  them  from  their  war- 
like habits.  Second,  the  discoveries  of  political  economy, 
especially  its  demonstration  of  the  falsity  of  the  "balance 
of  trade"  theory  of  international  relations  and  the  advan- 
tages of  international  free  trade,  cut  away  many  of  the  old 
occasions  for  commercial  jealousy  which  formerly  meant 
warfare.  Third,  the  application  of  steam  to  transportation 
has  facilitated  intercourse  between  different  countries,  and 
thus  destroyed  "that  ignorant  contempt  which  one  nation 
is  too  apt  to  feel  for  another."  These  three  significant 
elements  in  European  progress  are  all  applications  of  in- 
creasing knowledge.     Hence  the  general  conclusion :  that 

^  Query:  How  would  Buckle  have  accounted  for  Prussia?  From  his 
notes  it  is  probable  that  both  countries  would  have  been  included  under  his 
general  principle  that  the  preponderance  of  the  military  classes  is  the  inevi- 
table fruit  of  the  national  ignorance.  In  that  case  universal  compulsory  edu- 
cation merely  as  such  could  hardly  be  reckoned  as  synonymous  with  genuine 
national  intellect. 


468  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

in  a  comprehensive  view,  changes  in  a  people  are,  in  their 
aggregate,  dependent  solely  on  three  things :  first,  on  the 
amount  of  knowledge  possessed  by  the  ablest  men ;  secondly, 
on  the  direction  which  that  knowledge  takes ;  thirdly,  and 
above  all,  on  the  extent  to  which  the  knowledge  is  diffused, 
and  the  freedom  with  which  it  pervades  all  classes  of 
society.^ 

J.  S.  Mill  arrived  at  the  same  result  as  Buckle,  but  by  a 
different  road.  Intellectual  changes,  he  too  held  to  be 
the  most  conspicuous  agents  in  history,  not  because  moral 
or  economic  conditions  are  inconsiderable  but  because 
intellectual  conditions  limit  the  other  two  sets  of  conditions 
and  because  practically  they  may  be  said  to  work  with  the 
united  power  of  all  three.^ 

Buckle's  theory  is  difficult  to  criticize  for  it  is  not  wholly 
consistent  with  itself.  Now  he  tends  to  overstate  the 
influence  of  climate  and  geography  ;  now  he  underestimates 
them  :  for  example,  he  neglects  to  point  out  the  importance 
of  site  which  may  render  the  contact  of  cultures  eminently 
fertile  in  new  ideas.  Again,  in  his  chapter  on  the  History  of 
the  Spanish  Intellect,  he  shows  how  Spain  is  a  mixture  of 
races,  languages,  bloods,  varieties  of  laws,  constitutions 
and  governmental  methods,  lavish  abundance  of  material 
apphances,  foreign  contacts :  in  a  word,  a  nexus  of  condi- 
tions favorable  to  progressive  change.  Yet  she  has  not 
progressed.  And  this  because  ''there  has  been  every  sort 
of  alteration  except  alterations  of  opinion :  there  has  been 
every  possible  change  except  changes  in  knowledge." 
But  at  the  very  end  of  his  book,  after  having  delivered  him- 
self of  the  very  noble  aphorism  that  "so  surely  as  the  human 


^  This  and  preceding  citations  are  taken  from  the  one  volume  edition 
published  by  Routlcdge,  edited  by  J.  M.  Robertson,  pp.  96-129. 

2  Principles  of  Logic,  Bk.  VI,  chap.  xi. ;  cf.  Bk.  VI,  chap,  ix,  sec.  7 ;  also 
W.  H.  Mallock,  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  132  ff. 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  469 

mind  advances,  so  surely  will  that  emancipation  come,"  he 
goes  on  to  nullify  his  aphorism  and  in  fact  his  whole  position 
by  leaving  the  impression  that  it  is  not  after  all  the  human 
mind  that  carries  us  onward,  but  that  we  are  moved  by  some 
outside  power  which  reduces  the  universe  and  human  his- 
tory to  a  single  scheme  "permeated  by  one  glorious  principle 
of  universal  and  undeviating  regularity."  How  have  the 
mighty  fallen  !  Here  the  baiter  of  metaphysicians  falls  into 
temptation  and  announces  a  principle  that  would  have  made 
even  Jonathan  Edwards  green  with  envy.^ 

We  may  accept  within  reasonable  limits  the  general 
proposition  that  all  progress  is  in  terms  of  new  knowledge. 
We  advance  by  new  ideas.  True.  But  men  do  not  pick  up 
ideas  as  they  gather  blackberries  or  smell  sweet  odors  on 
the  morning  breeze.  Nor  do  ideas  appear  mysteriously  as 
the  dew.  Inspiration  itself  requires  food  and  a  milieu. 
Men  do  not  think  in  vacuo  nor  for  the  mere  exercise  of 
thinking.  They  think  about  things,  they  draw  ideas  from 
the  vicissitudes  of  daily  life.  There  is  some  danger  of 
getting  the  notion  that  ideas  are  a  force  separated  from  other 
social  realities.  It  is  only  necessary  to  remind  ourselves 
once  more  of  the  organic  nature  of  social  life  to  see  how 
dependent  ideas  are  upon  human  activities.  Furthermore, 
it  is  not  true  that  men  progress  only  by  direct  operation  of 
new  knowledge.  Progress  depends  on  beliefs  and  ideals 
no  less  than  on  positive  knowledge.  Indeed  clear  knowl- 
edge is  only  a  simple  refming  of  old  opinions  and  ideals, 
and  in  turn  usually  crystallizes  itself  into  new  ones.  In  this 
sense  progress  might  be  defined  as  the  catharsis  of  belief  by 
fact.  But  since  fact  is  always  relative  and  never  absolute 
the  best  we  can  say  is  that  when  the  new  belief  works  better 

^  See  for  a  brief  but  acute  criticism  of  Buckle,  Crozier,  Civilization  and 
Progress,  369-71,  also  P.  Earth,  V  ierleljakrschrifl  f.  wissenschajtlichc  Philos- 
ophie,  1899,  pp.  75-116. 


470  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

than  the  old  in  terms  of  social  welfare  it  is  a  step  forward. 
But  it  is  still  belief.^ 

There  must  be  some  question,  too,  about  Buckle's  esti- 
mate of  the  moral  element  in  progress.  It  is  bad  psychology 
to  separate  thus  absolutely  the  moral  from  the  intellectual. 
True,  knowledge  is  virtue :  but  such  knowledge  must  be 
whole  knowledge ;  and  whole  knowledge  must  include 
moral  as  well  as  intellectual  discoveries.  Moreover  it  is 
perfectly  evident  that  mankind  as  a  whole  has  emerged 
from  narrow  ethnocentrism  and  enlarged  its  area  of  sym- 
pathy and  love.  Now,  this  increase  of  sympathy  may  be 
the  result  of  new  knowledge,  may  be  the  fruits  of  explora- 
tion, travels,  missionary  relations,  scientific  anthropology 
and  ethnography.  Yet  the  mere  knowledge  that  the 
Dyaks  are  head-hunters  may  cause  us  to  shiver  and  exclaim, 
how  horrible,  how  inhuman !  The  fact  that  the  Indians 
of  the  Northwest  carve  their  genealogies  on  totem  poles 
fifty  feet  high  may  make  us  smile  and  murmur,  grotesque ! 
when  we  compare  them  with  our  pretty  heraldry  and  the 
elegant  statuary  turned  out  by  our  artists.  We  need  not 
mere  facts  about  other  races  and  peoples,  but  facts  that 
will  show  our  fundamental  likenesses  as  well  as  our  super- 
ficial differences.  And  such  a  principle  of  selection  implies 
that  somehow  or  other  the  principle  of  charity  has  slipped 
in  to  illuminate  our  knowledge.  Our  moral  or  religious 
ideas  always  react  upon  our  knowledge,  even  so  far  as  to 
taboo  utterly  this  or  that  kind  of  fact  or  idea,  and  to  place 
superlative  value  on  some  other  kinds  of  knowledge. 
Another  point :  no  amount  of  intellectual  achievement, 
whether  in  the  form  of  machinery,  science,  or  art  can  be 
counted  a  real  force  for  progress  unless  its  proceeds  are 

^  Nietzsche  throws  a  dash  of  cynicism  into  his  paradox :  "Wahrheit  ist 
die  Art  von  Irrthum,  ohne  welche  eine  bestimmte  Art  von  lebendigen  Wesen 
nicht  leben  konnte.  Der  Werth  fiir  das  Leben  entscheidet  zuletzt."  Der 
Wille  Zur  Machl,  sec.  493. 


THE   INTELLECTUALISTS  47 1 

distributed  according  to  some  principle  of  equity.  In 
other  words,  morality  and  moral  progress  are  active 
principles  indispensable  to  the  capitalization  of  all  the  other 
useful  winnings  of  man's  powers.  If  it  is  true  that  'waves 
of  personal  influence'  are  needed  to  make  these  intellectual 
gains  effective  for  advance,  it  is  doubly  true  that  such  waves 
must  be  moral  in  content.  Whether  you  call  the  moral 
principle  social  justice  or  sense  of  brotherhood,  or  simply 
love,  is  immaterial.  Society  can  live  and  move  by  means 
of  law  —  meaning  moral  law  —  and  by  means  of  that  alone. 
Yet  for  our  purposes  there  need  be  no  irreducible  conflict 
between  the  moral  and  the  intellectual  elements  in  progress. 
If  we  are  careful  to  define  our  terms  broadly  enough  so 
that  knowledge  means  full,  rounded  knowledge,  including 
ideas  of  moral  values,  then  we  can  march  with  Buckle  and 
inscribe  in  our  basic  platform  of  social  education  for  social 
progress  this  principle,  that  social  advance  depends  upon  the 
extent  to  which  knowledge  is  diffused  and  the  freedom  with 
which  it  pervades  all  classes  of  society.  But  there  is  a 
still  more  intimate  sense  in  which  moral  progress  may  be 
said  to  depend  absolutely  upon  increasing  intelhgence. 
Morality  is  the  experimental  code  of  social  relationships. 
This  code  grows  in  sweep  and  in  refinement  as  perception 
of  the  nature  and  complexity  of  the  world,  of  life,  and  of 
society  becomes  more  delicate  and  comprehensive.  An 
expanding  intelligence  alone  can  confer  this  heightened 
sensitiveness  of  perception.  Fundamental  human  dis- 
positions have  already  compassed  most  of  the  ordinary 
social  situations  and  have  worked  out  laws,  mores,  and  moral 
codes  to  fit  them.  But  new  moral  problems  can  ordy  be 
handled  in  the  light  of  new  increments  of  knowledge  and 
constructive   imagination.^     Certainly   if,    as   we   believe, 

*  Cf.  ante,  chaps,  v  and  vii ;  see  also  Ross,  Sin  and  Society.     Federici  con- 
ceived progress  as  fundamentally  intellectual  and  therefore  moral,  because 


472  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

superstition   and   passive   acceptance   of   dogma   are   im- 
morality, new  scientific  truth  means  growth  in  morahty. 


Certain  strident  voices  of  criticism  bid  us  stop  here. 
Your  argument  is  all  very  fine,  they  say,  but  it  is  false, 
because  it  starts  from  unsound  premises.  You  assume 
that  men  are  reasonable,  thoughtful  beings ;  but  really  they 
are  animals,  lucky  indeed  if  they  think  their  way  through 
one  problem  a  week.  They  are  creatures  of  instinct  and 
passion,  habitually  drunk  with  emotion ;  all  that  saves 
their  tipsy  stagger  from  a  series  of  inglorious  tumbles  are 
the  mores  of  their  group  and  the  fears  imposed  by  a  code 
of  organized  supernatural  Schrecklichkeit}  Now  we  grant 
without  reservation  that  neither  thought  nor  reason  are 
ever  found  in  their  pure  state.  Ideas  always  come  swaddled 
in  feelings.  We  recognize  that  reason  in  men  is  only  the 
very  tip  of  their  iceberg  of  mental  life :  they  live  by  habit, 
impulse,  illusion ;  they  are  to  a  certain  degree  automatons, 
reflecting  the  customary  acts  and  ideas  of  their  sect,  class, 

enlarging  knowledge  acts  as  a  check  upon  the  passions  and  reason  supplants 
force ;  in  other  words,  knowledge  spiritualizes  the  passions.  He  drops  into 
mysticism,  however,  in  holding  that  intelligence  has  an  innate  tendency  to 
develop  itself,  and  that  progress  is  inevitable.  {Lois  dii  Progris,  II,  136,  223, 
etc.)  Comte,  too,  held  that  the  positive  philosophy  with  its  elevated  social 
point  of  view  would  resolve  any  apparent  discrepancy  between  knowledge 
and  morality.     (Positive  Philosophy,  Book  VI,  chap.  16.) 

^  Brooks  Adams  is  typical :  "Another  conviction  forced  upon  my  mind, 
by  the  examination  of  long  periods  of  history,  was  the  exceedingly  small  part 
played  by  conscious  thought  in  molding  the  fatQ  of  man.  -A.t  the  moment 
of  action  the  human  being  almost  invariably  obeys  an  instinct,  like  an  animal ; 
only  after  action  has  ceased  does  he  reflect."  {Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay, 
prefact  to  2d  ed.,  p.  iii.)  Mr.  Balfour  rounds  out  this  criticism  by  contend- 
ing that  progress  cannot  be  effected  wholly  by  cold  reason  because  society 
"is  founded  —  and  from  the  nature  of  the  human  beings  which  constitute 
it,  must,  in  the  main,  be  always  founded  —  not  upon  criticism  but  upon 
feelings  and  beliefs,  and  upon  the  customs  and  codes  by  which  feelings  and 
beliefs  are,  as  it  were,  fixed  and  rendered  stable."  {A  Fragment  on  Progress, 
273-) 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  473 

or  nation ;  they  are  played  upon  by  all  the  streams  of 
suggestion ;  they  lapse  into  pure  sentimentality  to  escape 
the  tension  of  thinking ;  their  desires,  like  Bullstrode's  in 
Middlemarch,  are  stronger  than  their  theoretical  beliefs, 
and  they  easily  compel  a  satisfactory  harmony  between 
belief  and  the  gratification  of  desire.  This  is  why  human 
development  has  been  so  painfully  slow.  This  is  the  lead  in 
humanity's  wings.  But  instinctive  behavior  is  modifiable 
and  constantly  modified  in  the  direction  of  habit  and  in- 
telligence. Every  man  thinks  —  really  thinks  —  sometime 
or  other ;  and  the  world  has  always  had  a  saving  remnant 
of  men  who  were  able  to  keep  their  heads  above  the  surging 
level  of  impulse  a  little  longer  than  the  average.  In- 
telligence is  not  a  subordinate  apparatus,  set  in  motion  by 
instincts.  Curiosity,  thought,  and  its  other  manifestations 
are  just  as  truly  native  dispositions  and  act  just  as  naturally 
as  the  instincts  or  emotions.  This  is  why  the  plane  of  life 
has  risen  at  all. 

Since  these  criticisms  are  so  fundamental,  we  must  en- 
deavor to  analyze  them  more  in  detail.  Take  first  the 
problem  of  instinct.  To  account  off-hand  for  this  or  that 
behavior  in  a  man  or  a  social  group  as  ''instinct"  is  fre- 
quently to  play  the  ostrich.  Instinct,  like  other  phrases, 
is  a  ready  way  of  saying,  "I  don't  know."  Of  course  there 
are  certain  primary  impulses  or  instincts  which  form  at  least 
the  point  of  departure  for  social  life.  There  are  also  certain 
elementary  sentiments  —  fear,  pride,  vanity,  shame  — 
with  which  we  must  reckon.  All  these  psychological  factors 
—  and  we  might  add  imagination  and  ideals  —  are  the 
colored  threads  out  of  which  the  social  fabric  is  woven ; 
they  design  and  execute  the  patterns  economic,  domestic, 
political,  moral,  or  religious.  All  this  is  trite  enough. 
But  there  is  another  factor  which  in  a  sense  is  the  epitome 
and  expression  of  all  the  rest,  which  seems  to  be  the  ulti- 


474  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

mate  -condition  of  mental  and  social  life :  this  is  the  factor 
of  desire,  of  wants,  of  choices  deliberately  pursued. 

Human  hfe  is  a  constant  theme  with  variations,  in  which 
value  is  the  theme.  The  whole  economic  process,  the  entire 
range  of  political  and  domestic  activities  resolve  themselves 
into  shiftings  in  the  incidence  of  value.  Morality,  too, 
is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  this.  Virtue  is  a  correct 
selection  of  values ;  vice  or  sin  a  faulty  emphasis  upon  or 
choice  of  apparent  values.  Since  it  is  desire  that  confers 
value  upon  things  or  institutions  we  are  ultimately  thrown 
back  upon  some  philosophy  of  human  desire  as  the  only 
sound  basis  upon  which  to  erect  social  theory  or  to  formulate 
a  program  of  advance. 

"Desire  is  the  steam  which  drives  the  machinery  of 
society,"  says  Professor  Ross.  Herbert  Spencer  had  put 
the  same  truth  less  pithily  a  generation  before :  .  .  .  "The 
force  which  produces  and  sets  in  motion  every  social 
mechanism  —  governmental,  mercantile,  or  other  —  is  some 
accumulation  of  personal  desires."  ^  He  of  course  drew  the 
—  for  him  —  inevitable  conclusion  that  desire  will  provide 
for  itself  all  necessary  satisfactions,  spontaneously,  with- 
out state-fostering,  and  better  than  the  state  could  ever 
do.  The  premise  is  correct,  but  the  conclusion  fallacious. 
For  desire  is  not  some  mystical  driving  force  originating 
from  without.  Spencer  himself  would  have  been  the  first 
to  deny  it.  Desire,  like  the  will,  is  merely  the  motor  side 
of  certain  experiences  as  they  touch  certain  aspects  of 
inherent  constitution.  What  are  the  experiences  necessary 
to  stir  up  desire?  Strong  suggestion,  pressure  of  popula- 
tion, storing  up  of  capital  with  visions  of  its  possibilities, 
migration  with  its  new  scenes,  contact  with  other  peoples 
in  war  or  trade,  and  the  like.  Desire  thus  appears  in- 
extricably bound  up  with  human  experiences  and  probably 

^  Essay  on  Over-Legislation. 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  475 

makes  respectful  obeisance  to  imitation  as  its  sovereign 
principle.  Since  imitation  may  be  spontaneous  or  cal- 
culated and  directed,  it  is  evident  that  considerable  room 
must  be  left  in  any  social  theory  for  the  play  of  fostering 
and  cultivating  desires. 

The  principle  of  desire  may  be  phrased  in  various  ways. 
It  may  be  stated  simply  as  the  wish  is  father  to  the  deed, 
which  seems  to  be  the  key  to  Mr.  Gunton's  theory  of  prog- 
ress. He  makes  economic  wants,  or  a  progressive  standard 
of  living,  the  motive  force  to  larger  and  more  economical 
production,  and  also  to  higher  real  wages,  which  in  turn 
become  the  marks  of  progress.^  I  must  confess  to  getting 
very  little  illumination  from  this  supposed  explanation,  for 
it  fails  to  tell  me  why  I  should  increase  my  economic  wants 
and  therefore  set  going  a  progressive  standard  of  living 
and  therefore  again  speed  up  the  economic  organization 
and  therefore  finally  arrive  at  progress.  Have  we  not 
traveled  around  a  vicious  circle  and  merely  come  back  to 
our  point  of  departure?  We  have  a  progressive  standard 
of  living,  therefore  we  progress !  Or,  to  try  again,  we  may 
state  the  concept  more  absolutely  as  a  law,  as  an  irreducible 
principle.  This,  Mr.  Blair  has  attempted  in  his  "law  of 
the  evolution  of  human  wants,"  to  the  effect  that  the 
satisfaction  of  any  want  gives  rise  to  the  development  of 
another  want,  and  the  new  want  is,  under  normal  circum- 
stances, of  a  higher  order  than  the  want  whose  place  it 
takes.^ 

This  principle  bears  in  itself  no  necessarily  mystical 
elements.  It  may  easily  be  resolved  into  psychological 
quantities.  It  is  made  up  of  the  inabihty  to  maintain  a 
high  state  of  tension  for  a  long  period,  the  necessity  for 

^  Wealth  and  Progress,  194;  cf.  pp.  188,  etc. ;  also  Id.,  Principles  of  Social 
Economics,  chaps,  i-iii. 

^  Human  Progress,  168  ff. ;  cf.  H.  George,  Progress  and  Poverty,  Book  X, 
chap.  iii. 


476  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

increasing  after  a  certain  point  the  increments  of  stimulation 
to  produce  proportional  increments  of  pain  or  pleasure ; 
and,  at  the  risk  of  appearing  cynical,  we  might  add,  childish 
ennui  and  ingratitude.  Humanity  is  easily  bored.  It 
demands  ceaseless  variety.  Off  with  the  old  and  on  with  the 
new.  Le  roi  est  mort.  Vive  le  roi !  Discontent  is  perhaps 
the  only  really  primal  quality  with  which  we  are  eternally 
and  inalterably  stamped.  So  when  M.  Durkheim  asks  if 
progress  does  not  proceed  from  the  ennui  which  worn  out 
pleasures  leave,  he  is  not  indulging  in  a  bit  of  smart 
sarcasm.  At  any  rate  he  is  in  good  company,  for  Comte 
and  Lacombe  had  cracked  the  same  joke.  But  this  is  not 
cynicism ;  it  is  sound  psychology.  It  proceeds  from  the 
same  mental  principle  that  induces  me  to  eat  the  crust  of 
my  pumpkin  pie  first  or  to  wish  that  the  heart  of  a  water- 
melon grew  next  the  rind.  It  is  a  causal  principle,  in  so 
far  as  we  can  talk  of  causal  principles  in  social  phenomena. 
Therefore,  I  believe  Professor  Ross  is  incorrect  in  criticizing 
the  ennui  theory  as  confusing  cause  with  condition.  The 
reaction  against  stufl&ng  one's  stomach  or  one's  standard 
of  living  is  no  less  causal  than  the  forces  which  conspired 
to  produce  the  stuffing. 

Dissatisfaction  or  discontent  is  the  negative  aspect  of 
this  problem.  But  being  negative  it  is  none  the  less  valid. 
Action  is  initiated  by  a  feeling  that  something  is  lacking 
and  is  directed  toward  the  filling  up  of  voids,  physical, 
intellectual,  spiritual.  As  Bergson  points  out,  this  con- 
stant creation  of  new  needs  is  the  very  essence  of  intelligence. 

Here  it  is  obvious  that  we  can  carry  analysis  no  further. 
If  we  accept  the  idea  that  the  pressure  of  vital  necessities 
cooperates  with  the  nature  of  intelligence  itself  to  expand 
the  circle  of  our  desires  and  therefore  of  our  life,  we  are 
in  the  clutch  of  metaphysics ;  we  are  either  floundering 
in  the  morass  or  we  are  winging  our  course  gaily  into  the 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  477 

empyrean  according  as  you  estimate  metaphysics.  At  any 
rate  we  are  hopelessly  out  of  range  of  objective  science. 
An  interesting  study  on  "social  progress  as  the  substitu- 
tion of  values,"  by  an  Italian  scholar  illustrates  how  this 
view  of  history  leads  us  into  the  bourne  from  which  no 
scientific  traveler  returns.  He  denies  that  science  can  deal 
in  values  or  in  progress  in  values.  Value  is  a  subject  for 
philosophy  or  ethics.  But  what  standards  of  value  can  we 
use  in  working  out  a  systematic  philosophy  of  history? 
Evidently  not  the  mere  sentiments  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
not  a  mere  eudasmonistic  criterion :  for  the  value  of  life, 
individual  and  social,  does  not  reside  in  the  element  of 
pleasure.  Nor  will  simply  a  dry  sociological  formula  of 
increasing  complexity  and  specialization  serve  as  the  test 
for  increasing  value.  Some  end  or  purpose  must  always  be 
posited  as  the  motive  for  increasing  social  complexity. 
Hence  it  is  impossible  to  determine  objectively  any  direct 
and  continuous  increase  or  diminution  of  values :  progress 
is  rather  a  succession  or  substitution  of  values.  Each 
successive  form  of  historic  civilization  is  the  adequate 
expression  of  a  value  determined  by  human  life.  As  each 
successive  people  incarnates  or  exemplifies  some  aspect  of 
life  —  art,  war,  rehgion,  industry  —  we  may  posit  progress. 
Each  epoch  produces  a  form  of  value  which  is  eliminated 
in  historical  development  by  another  form  expressed  by  a 
social  class  which  appears  on  the  scene.  The  sum  of  virtue 
and  of  morality  remains  essentially  the  same  from  genera- 
tion to  generation,  but  its  form  changes.  Moral  progress 
consists  not  in  discovering  new  principles,  for  they  are 
already  indelibly  written  into  our  conscience,  but  by  more 
precise,  delicate,  and  profound  appHcation  of  principles 
already  known  and  even  traditional.  If  individual  virtues 
seem  to  decrease,  civic  virtues  increase  visibly.  This 
substitution  of  values  explains  the  common  sighing  after 


478  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

the  ' '  good  old  times . ' '  For  while  we  may  lose  one  dimension 
only  to  find  another,  we  do  not  always  take  kindly  to  the 
wrench.  In  short,  to  this  writer,  as  to  Eucken,  progress 
consists  in  discovering  all  the  latent  energies  of  humanity 
and  in  making  them  grow  to  infinity.  But  this  signifies 
that  something  has  always  existed  in  us  which  was  capable 
of  this  expansion  —  something  always  identical  with  itself, 
some  unchanging  residuum.  In  Goethe's  words,  ^^ Der 
Mensch  bleibet  derselbe,  die  Menschheit  schreitet  immer 
fort."  1 

Surely  this  is  debatable  ground.  As  to  its  general 
position  we  can  only  point  out  that  it  is  avowedly  non- 
scientific,  and  therefore  will  get  us  nowhere  in  an  attempt 
to  formulate  the  psychologic  presuppositions  of  progress. 
It  would  be  easy  to  demonstrate  its  inconsistencies  even 
with  itself :  we  shall  stop  to  point  out  only  one  of  them, 
however.  Why,  for  instance,  having  accepted  the  principle 
that  man  is  latently  perfect,  that  he  is  sown  in  incorrupti- 
bility, should  we  infer  that  this  group  of  men  can  discover 
and  exemplify  only  one  phase  of  our  native  perfection, 
that  group  another  phase  of  it,  and  so  on,  instead  of  assum- 
ing that  every  individual  and  every  group  is  capable  of 
bursting  into  the  fullness  of  perfection?  Really  accord- 
ing to  this  view  there  is  progress  for  neither  man  nor 
humanity.  History  is  for  both  Mensch  and  Menschheit 
simply  sloughing  off  erroneous  beliefs  about  human  nature ; 
it  is  simply  self-realization  and  self-identification  with  the 
Infinite  Perfection  which  is  the  sum  of  all  ReaUty.  Now  if 
this  is  what  Sr.  Chiapelli  means,  I  have  no  quarrel  with 
him  ;  for  it  is  perfectly  admissible  to  conceive  human  history 
as  merely  the  faithful  record  of  a  wholly  factitious  life. 

^  A.  Chiapelli,  "Nuovo  teorie  sul  progresso  civile,"  Niiova  Antologia,  De- 
cember, 191 1 ;  the  same  article  somewhat  expanded  appears,  as  "Le  progres 
social  comme  substitution  des  valeurs,"  Rev.  de  melaphysique  et  morale,  xx., 
623-37. 


THE   INTELLECTUALISTS  479 

Accordingly  we  are  a  sort  of  amphibious  species,  living  at 
once  as  Real  Beings  in  the  great  ocean  of  Pure  Being,  and 
as  make-believe  beings  going  through  a  meaningless  round 
of  petty  doings  in  a  factitious  world  called  the  world  of 
time  and  space.  We  are  sitting  as  it  were  on  the  solid 
banks  of  eternity  dabbling  our  feet  in  the  stream  of  time. 
Now,  this  is  all  very  well.  I  like  to  think  of  myself  as  free 
to  dabble  my  feet  or  not.  But  after  all  for  some  darkly 
hidden  reason  we  are  compelled  to  dabble  whether  we  will 
or  no.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  say  we  are  pitched  headlong 
into  the  stream  of  time  and  spend  our  whole  lives  trying 
desperately  to  swim  to  the  banks  of  eternity  which  some 
sturdy  guesser  has  described  to  us.  The  point  is,  if  we  hold 
strictly  to  this  view  of  things  we  may  as  well  give  up  once 
for  all  any  hope  of  rationalizing  our  world  or  establishing 
anything  worthy  the  name  of  scientific  order. 

No,  it  is  not  necessary  to  plow  over  the  field  of  meta- 
physics to  appreciate  the  role  of  desire,  especially  in  its 
aspect  of  discontent.  Whatever  its  ultimate  philosophical 
bearings  it  remains  true  that  men  want  new  and  better 
things,  get  them,  begin  to  compare  them  not  with  what  they 
used  to  have  but  with  what  they  think  they  ought  to  have 
next,  are  uneasy,  struggle,  strive,  agonize,  hope,  pray, 
attack  high  heaven,  and  finally  win  the  newly-desired, 
only  to  repeat  the  old  round  ad  infinitum.  Grimm's 
fairy  tale  of  the  fisherman  and  his  ambitious  wife,  if  we 
can  forget  their  sad  end,  typifies  this  ceaseless  process. 
And  it  is  just  as  true  of  communities  as  it  is  of  individuals. 
Democracies  are  not  satisfied  with  democracy :  hence 
"the  cure  for  democracy  is  more  democracy."  Revolu- 
tions usually  occur  not  when  people  are  starving  but  in 
times  of  comparative  plenty.  The  submerged  tenth  are 
in  general  not  nearly  so  concerned  about  their  steady 
advance  up  the  cultural  or  industrial  ladder  as  some  of 


480  THEORIES  OF   SOCL\L   PROGRESS 

their  over-lords  are.  For  this  reason  many  over-lords 
object  to  teaching  economics  or  politics  to  the  disinherited  : 
a  little  of  this  sort  of  wisdom  is  a  dangerous  thing  —  it 
creates  a  taste  for  more.  To  the  benevolent  despot  sweaty 
nightcaps  are  a  deal  less  problematic  than  teeming  brains. 
Csesar  would  have  men  about  him  that  are  fat,  sleek- 
headed  men  that  sleep  o'  nights.  The  lean  and  hungry  men 
have  vast  appetites  for  ideas  which  only  whet  themselves 
the  more.  The  truth  is  that  you  may  have  a  sort  of  resent- 
ful discontent  in  a  state  of  poverty.  But  poverty  is  too 
weak,  too  unorganized,  too  unresistant  to  express  itself. 
Really  effective  discontent  must  have  a  base  of  supplies. 
A  fairly  adequate  income,  some  leisure,  more  education, 
and  a  vision  of  better  things  are  its  sinews  of  war.  Does 
this  not  deny,  then,  the  common  formula  for  progress  (ex- 
pressed, for  example,  by  Novicow)  as  the  passage  from  a 
smaller  to  a  larger  sum  of  enjoyment  ?  Manifestly  there  is 
no  abiding  place  for  happiness  in  things  won.  The  joy  in 
life  must  come,  if  it  come  at  all,  in  the  process  of  winning,  in 
the  sensation  of  matching  one's  powers  against  worthy  odds. 
The  kernel  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  desires  are  open 
to  suggestion,  to  molding,  to  pruning,  and  educating.  It 
matters  not  how  you  classify  them  or  what  terminology 
you  employ,^  they  are  each  and  every  one  of  them  funda- 
mentally an  educational  problem  if  we  are  not  to  abandon 
the  field  utterly  to  animal  impulse.  Take  any  of  them  at 
random  just  as  they  come  —  hunger,  sex-appetite,  play, 
showing  off,  curiosity  —  however  instinctive  it  may  seem, 
each  one  of  them  must  be  eked  out  by  some  sort  of  educative 
process  before  it  can  function  at  its  highest  efficiency. 
They  all  reduce  to  a  question  of  educating  the  will.  Here 
we  return  once  more  to  Hegel  and  the  idea  of  progress  as 

*  See  Ross,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  chap,  vii,  for  a  summary  of  such 
classifications. 


THE   INTELLECTUALISTS  481 

will.  But  since  desire  is  multiform,  there  being  no  desire- 
as-such,  this  education  of  the  will  means  educating  to  desire 
rightly,  to  choose  between  conflicting  desires,  to  arrange 
the  various  types  of  desires,  not  as  in  Ross'  scheme  accord- 
ing to  a  principle  of  logic  or  convenience,  but  according 
to  definite  standards  of  value,  to  be  determined  by  their 
bearing  on  real  development.  In  other  words,  education 
must  determine  the  standards  of  wants  which  will  make  for 
substantial  progress  and  not  for  mere  economic  or  political 
evolution.  Desire  is  the  steam  which  moves  the  machinery 
of  society  and  propels  it  upward  only  when  it  is  properly 
applied.  Otherwise  it  may  burst  the  boiler,  scald  the 
engineer,  and  dump  us  all  into  the  ditch. 


It  is  understood,  then,  that  man  is  a  surging  mass  of 
desires  and  impulses,  but  that  this  ocean  of  animality  has 
its  strong  currents  of  wisdom  and  conscious  reason.  No 
man  is  always  and  everywhere  either  knave  or  fool.  Hence 
we  are  thrown  back  once  more  upon  the  problem  of  how  to 
purge  and  guide  desires  through  knowledge.  Brutish 
desires  are  spawned  in  the  mud  of  error.  If,  then,  we 
frankly  discard  the  term  "knowledge"  and  talk  of  truth,  are 
we  likely  to  come  any  nearer  the  mark?  Progress  to  both 
the  religious  and  the  scientific  mind  has  always  been  growth 
out  of  error  into  truth  as  each  conceived  it.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  Comte's  Three  Stages.  Huxley  restated  part 
of  it  in  declaring  that  the  historical  evolution  of  humanity, 
which  is  generally  and  not  unreasonably  regarded  as  prog- 
ress, has  been,  and  is  being,  accompanied  by  a  coordinate 
elimination  of  the  supernatural  from  its  originally  large 
occupation  of  men's  thought.^     Error,  of  which  this  reli- 

^  Cited  in  his  Life  and  Letters,  II,  317. 
2i 


482  THEORIES  OF  SOCL-VL   PROGRESS 

gious  superstition  is  only  a  fraction,  becomes  to  Ward  almost 
a  substance,  real  as  witches  and  devils  were  to  medieval 
churchmen.  Error  is  the  most  contagious  disease  in  the 
world.  The  only  hope  for  progress  lies  in  making  truth 
even  more  "  catching."  This  is  the  mission  of  social  science, 
says  Ward.  But  is  not  this  the  business  of  all  science? 
It  is,  rephes  Ward.  But  nevertheless  he  sadly  admits 
that  all  the  science  in  the  world  has  failed  to  remove  any  of 
the  great  world  errors. 

"The  great  bulk  of  the  population  on  the  globe  is  steeped 
in  error.  Ignorance  is  comparatively  safe.  It  is  error 
that  does  the  mischief,  and  the  stronger  the  reasoning 
faculties  working  upon  meager  materials  the  more  mis- 
leading and  disastrous  the  erroneous  conclusions  thus 
drawn  are  for  mankind." 

The  problem  is  how  to  make  truth  accessible  to  more  than 
an  insignificant  fraction  of  men,  the  elite.  It  must  come 
through  making  truth  more  attractive  than  error,  more 
alluring,  more  contagious.  We  shall  not  stop  now  to  say 
how  this  shall  be  done.  That  problem  will  crop  out  again 
in  its  proper  place.  Meanwhile  we  shall  only  record 
Ward's  general  conclusion  that  the  progressive  character 
of  any  age  depends  upon  the  amount  of  truth  embodied 
in  its  philosophy,  i.e.,  in  its  ''world  views."  ^  This  con- 
clusion tallies  pretty  closely  with  the  net  contribution  of 
Buckle.  It  has  the  added  advantage  of  stating  very  pre- 
cisely just  that  needed  corrective  to  Buckle's  view,  namely, 
that  knowledge  if  it  is  to  function  as  progressive  must  be 
true  knowledge,  not  merely  true  science,  but  true  humanity. 
Here  the  paths  of  Buckle  and  Ward  join  those  of  Hegel  and 
Comte :  What  is  "the  truth"  (Ward)  that  generalized 
and  spread  throughout  a  population  (Buckle  and  Ward) 
will  make  it  free,  will  express  the  highest  measure  of  human 

^  Applied  Sociology,  80-3. 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  483 

freedom  (Hegel)  ?  The  truth  that  we  are  all  one  and  that 
it  is  our  business  to  serve  (Comte). 

Such  socially  dynamic  truth  implies  on  the  one  hand 
the  use  of  constructive  imagination  and  rational  criticism ; 
on  the  other,  the  organization  of  conditions  favorable  to 
producing  them.  These  are  the  only  terms  on  which 
organized  thought  can  undertake  to  transform  drift  into 
mastery. 

Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour,  in  one  of  his  addresses,  made  good 
use  of  the  term  ''moral  imagination."^  I  am  not  at  all 
sure  but  that  every  real  step  in  human  progress  up  to  the 
present  moment  has  been  secured  by  moral  imagination 
rather  than  by  imagination  in  the  invention  of  new  tools 
or  new  methods  of  production  or  new  systems  of  govern- 
ment. It  was  brought  out  in  a  preceding  paragraph  that 
intellectual  advance  must  rest  on  a  distinctly  moral  basis, 
and  vice  versa.  This  will  bear  reiterating.  In  terms  of 
imagination  we  might  say  that  any  conception  of  any  public 
question  whatsoever  which  was  not  morally  sound  must 
prove,  however  brilliant  it  might  appear,  inevitably 
detrimental  to  social  welfare.  Neither  conservatism  nor 
radicahsm,  protection  nor  free  trade,  democracy  nor 
aristocracy,  state  socialism  nor  private  ownership  is  sound 
unless  moral  imagination  has  entered  into  the  construc- 
tion of  its  program.  Every  scheme  of  political  or  eco- 
nomic reform  which  went  to  pot  has  done  so  because 
it  lacked  that  absolute  essential.  Every  scheme  for  wel- 
fare work  for  employees  and  all  kindred  welfare  schemes 
must  fail  as  Pullman  failed  if  they  neglect  it.  Not  only  the 
social  system  as  a  whole,  but  every  detail  in  it  must  relate 
itself  to  this  ethical  passion  and  must  continue  to  maintain 
itself  through  constant  use  of  the  moral  imagination  if  it 
is  to  remain  healthy  and  survive.  This  is  precisely  what 
^  Essays  and  Addresses,  2d  ed.,  ch.  vii. 


484  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

we  meant  by  the  term  'efficient  imagination'  in  the  discus- 
sion of  the  social  self.  It  might  also  without  violence 
to  logic  be  made  a  synonym  for  'truth.'  The  significant 
point  about  the  whole  matter  is  that  we  do  not  have  to  sit 
in  our  rocking-chairs  and  wait  for  soft  breezes  from  the 
southland  to  blow  moral  imagination  into  us ;  it  is  some- 
thing which  can  and  must  be  cultivated.  In  fact,  as  it  is  the 
basis  of  social  progress,  so  is  it  the  fundamental  element 
in  social  education. 

But  moral  imagination  is  not  sufficient  unto  itself.  Its 
reservoirs  need  constant  cleaning  and  overhauling.  Here 
is  the  function  of  critical  thought,  or  science.  This  seems 
to  be  the  real  idea  behind  W.  K.  Chfford's  bold  claim  that 
scientific  thought  is  not  an  accompaniment  or  condition  of 
human  progress,  but  human  progress  itself.^  The  springs 
of  imagination  are  not  released  so  long  as  tradition  and 
superstition  hold  sway.  Imagination  is  dynamic,  tradition 
and  dogma  static.  The  chief  glory  of  science,  —  far 
overtopping  its  contributions  to  material  achievement,  — ■ 
is  to  have  broken  through  those  crusts  of  authority;  in 
other  words,  to  have  stung  man  out  of  his  dream  of  quiescent 
or  passive  adaptation  and  into  the  waking  state  of  active 
adaptation.^  On  this  basis  rests  the  claim  that  the  criti- 
cally minded  individual  is  the  paramount  force  for  progress.^ 

Since  organized  error  will  yield  only  to  organized  truth 
it  is  essential  that  deliberate  provision  be  made  in  social 

^  Lecture  on  The  Aims  and  Instruments  of  Scientific  Thought. 

^  Cf.  Draper,  op.  cit.,  chap,  xi ;  Crozier,  Civilization  and  Progress,  419-28; 
Bristol,  Social  Adaptation,  277 ;   Bushee,  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  79  :  236-51. 

^  Cf.  Lavrov:  "Without  criticism  there  is  no  development;  without 
criticism  there  is  no  perfection ;  without  criticism  of  one's  environment 
man  would  never  have  progressed  beyond  the  animal  stage."  Hence  the 
need  for  enlightened  individuals  as  disseminators,  and  the  categorical  im- 
perative of  the  enlightened  minority  towards  the  majority.  (From  Three 
Discussions  on  the  Contemporary  Importance  of  Philosophy,  quoted  in  Hecker, 
Russian  Sociology,  108 ;  cf.  Ibid.,  199,  for  a  statement  of  Kareyev's  sub- 
stantially similar  position.) 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  485 

polity  for  creating  conditions  under  which  science  may 
flourish.  We  have  already  seen  how  under  present  hap- 
hazard conditions  it  is  all  but  impossible  to  get  real  public 
opinion.  Harder  still  is  it  to  secure  real  scientific  truth. 
Hence  we  are  forced  to  discard  the  old  trust  that  thought 
would  appear  miraculously  like  art  under  the  patronage 
of  the  wealthy  few,  or  that  it  would  slip  in  as  the  by- 
product of  religion  or  invention  or  voyages  or  state- 
craft. The  Great  Society  of  the  present  or  the  future  must 
heed  the  demand  for  some  form  of  public  (not  private) 
endowment  of  thought.^  I  mean  not  only  scientific  in- 
vention, but  all  forms  of  scientific  research,  including  the 
social  sciences  and  every  branch  of  human  knowledge  which 
gets  beyond  mere  recapitulation  of  the  past  and  strives  to 
enlarge  the  horizon  of  truth.  It  may  be  said  that  our 
universities  already  offer  this  opportunity.  But  the  pres- 
sure of  administrative  authority,  the  whims  of  benefactors, 
the  ignorant  interference  of  trustees  and  legislators,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  multifarious  outside  demands  made  upon  the 
time  of  university  faculties,  hamper  the  creative  search 
for  truth.  We  must  depend  upon  the  higher  institutions 
of  learning,  but  we  must  go  deeper  and  fare  farther  than 
that.  The  specialist  is  always  in  danger  of  being  con- 
founded with  the  charlatan  in  the  minds  of  an  illiterate 
pubHc.  The  inference  is  obvious.  Before  scientific  truth 
can  bear  its  fruit  in  rational  progress  the  pioneer  of  thought 
must  be  backed  up  by  an  ever  widening  group  of  the  criti- 
cally minded  and  discerning  who  know  the  value  of  research 
and  will  fight  to  maintain  the  conditions  favorable  to  it 
even  though  they  may  not  be  able  to  follow  the  sesquipeda- 
lian terminology  of  the  individual  scientist. 

Here  we  touch  finally  a  basic  condition  to  the  progress 
of  truth  (likewise  to  the  promotion  of  health)  :  I  mean  the 
^  Cf.  Wallas,  The  Great  Society,  chap.  x. 


486  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

elimination  of  fear.  Fear  may  have  been  one  of  the  great 
disciplinary  agents  in  our  animal  past,  but  it  is  always 
coercive,  repressive,  conservative,  constrictive.  Fear  never 
achieved  any  positive  end.  It  is  negative.  It  tames  but 
does  not  expand.  Hence  its  value  is  limited,  particularly 
for  an  age  somewhat  emerged  from  pure  savagery.  An  age 
of  progress  is  an  age  of  faith  and  hope  —  in  the  broad 
scientific  sense.  An  age  of  progressive  thought  demands  a 
fearless  search  for  truth,  unhampered  by  dogma  or  class 
prejudice  or  organized  hindrance.  The  call  of  the  horizon 
not  the  fear  of  dead  gods  discovered  the  Americas  and  un- 
locked the  principle  of  evolution.  This  is  the  truth  that 
makes  free.  Courage  to  face  the  issue  of  pohtical  privilege 
would  complete  the  revolution  of  democracy  against 
autocracy  which  has  been  seething  for  three  hundred  years. 
Courageous  casting  ofT  all  bondage  to  authority  and  super- 
stition would  carry  through  the  religious  revolution  begun 
four  centuries  ago,  wipe  out  the  last  vestige  of  religious 
privilege,  and  settle  the  claims  of  spiritual  liberty  against 
ecclesiasticism.  Courage  to  think  about  the  nature  of 
property  and  the  history  of  ownership  would  pave  the  way 
for  the  great  revolution  against  economic  privilege  now  under 
way,  would  adjust  the  rights  of  persons  against  those  of 
property,  and  create  industrial  democracy  in  place  of  autoc- 
racy. This  is  why  privileged  classes  and  individuals  often 
prefer  that  men  should  remain  stupid,  ignorant,  and  sensu- 
ous. Thought  is  dangerous  when  once  unleashed,  for  it 
begins  to  question.  The  real  menace  of  privilege  is  its 
tendency  to  substitute  anodynes  for  stimulants. 

This  is  the  answer  of  science  to  passion  and  haphazard 
day-dreaming.  This  is  the  judgment  of  thought  upon 
aristocracy.  This  is  the  inexorable  condition  of  real  prog- 
ress. Humanity  can  move  onward  only  as  it  generates 
imagination,  moral  imagination,  clarified  by  untrammeled 


THE  INTELLECTUALISTS  487 

critical  thought,  daring  imagination  based  upon  fact  and 
enlarged  by  scientific  faith.  Only  when  the  majority  of 
a  social  group  are  provided  with  the  means  of  finding  out 
truth  for  themselves  and  actually  develop  the  capacity  for 
constructive  thought  can  we  hope  to  realize  the  noble 
vision  of  the  ideahsts.  If  that  dream  of  a  society  made  up 
of  conlrihiitive  types  of  personality,  real  aristocracy,  univer- 
sal aristocracy,  coincides  with  some  Divine  Purpose,  so 
much  the  better.  If  not,  we  must  travel  the  road  alone. 
For  along  that  road  lies  the  only  hope  of  achieving  mastery 
over  blind  drift. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
THE   ARTISTS 

I 

In  Literature 

In  admitting  the  sheer  power  of  sound  thinking  as  the 
mainspring  of  human  progress  there  was  obviously  no 
intention  of  limiting  thought  to  the  physical  sciences,  or 
indeed  to  what  is  called  science  in  general  as  opposed  to 
other  forms  of  thought.  A  world  that  put  its  whole  trust 
in  chemistry  or  mathematics  would  not  get  very  far.  The 
creative  impulse  striving  after  truth  is  the  sole  determinant 
of  the  value  in  a  thought-form.  If  it  is  true  that  this 
creative  impulse  often  finds  its  highest  expression  in  the 
fine  arts,  we  should  expect  to  find  them  functioning  largely 
in  human  development.  Hence  another  group  of  ideolo- 
gists demand  a  hearing,  namely,  those  who  make  the  some- 
what extraordinary  claim  that  ideas-in-literature  are  the 
moving  forces  in  human  progress.  Walt  Whitman  was 
one  of  its  most  outspoken  protagonists.  In  Dejnocratic 
Vistas  he  avows : 

"To  the  ostent  of  the  senses  and  eyes,  I  know,  the  influ- 
ences which  stamp  the  world's  history  are  wars,  uprisings 
or  downfalls  of  dynasties,  changeful  movements  of  trade, 
important  inventions,  navigation,  military  or  civil  govern- 
ments, advent  of  powerful  personalities,  conquerors,  etc. 
These  of  course  play  their  part :  yet  it  may  be,  a  single 
new  thought,  imagination,  abstract  principle,  even  Hterary 
style,  fit  for  the  time,  put  in  shape  by  some  great  literatus, 

488 


THE  ARTISTS  489 

and  projected  among  mankind,  may  duly  cause  changes, 
growths,  removals,  greater  than  the  longest  and  bloodiest 
war,  or  the  most  stupendous  merely  pohtical,  dynastic,  or 
commercial  overturn.  In  short,  as,  though  it  may  not  be 
realized,  it  is  strictly  true,  that  a  few  first-class  poets, 
philosophs,  and  authors,  have  substantially  settled  and 
given  status  to  the  entire  religion,  education,  law,  sociology, 
etc.,  of  the  hitherto  civilized  world,  by  tingeing  and  often 
creating  the  atmospheres  out  of  which  they  have  arisen, 
such  also  must  stamp,  and  more  than  ever  stamp,  the 
interior  and  real  democratic  construction  of  this  Ameri- 
can continent  to-day  and  days  to  come.  ...  In  the  civi- 
lization of  to-day  it  is  undeniable  that,  over  all  the  arts, 
literature  dominates,  serves  beyond  all  — ■  shapes  the 
character  of  church  and  school  —  or,  at  any  rate,  is  capable 
of  doing  so.  Including  the  literature  of  science,  its  scope 
is  indeed  unparallel'd.  .  .  .  The  writers  of  a  time  hint 
the  mottoes  of  its  gods." 

Everybody  is  familiar  with  the  poet's  challenge  to  the 
statesman  :  "Let  me  make  the  songs  for  a  nation  and  I  care 
not  who  makes  her  laws."  A  more  recent  member  of  the 
brotherhood,  Mr.  A.  W.  E.  O'Shaughnessy,  has  caught 
up  the  same  idea  in  his  We  are  the  Music-Makers.  I  have 
already  spoken  of  Anatole  France's  ardent  defense  of 
Utopias.  In  Clopinel  he  sketches  his  own  Utopia.  But 
how  realize  it?  By  the  word,  he  replies.  "The  word 
like  the  sling  of  David  strikes  down  the  violent  and  brings 
low  the  strong."  And  this  word  is  literature,  whether 
the  polished  eloquence  of  an  address  on  Utopia  or  the  mor- 
dant satire  of  the  lie  des  Pingouins,  or  in  the  warm  and 
genuine  sentiment  of  Opinions  Sociales.  It  is  the  power  of 
the  word  removed  from  priest  and  medicine  man,  divested 
of  trumpery  magic,  reclothed  with  the  garment  of  truth 
in  idea  and  sentiment,  and  entrusted  to  the  great  soul 
which  can  best  communicate  itself  in  the  rhythm  and  ca- 
dence of  noble  prose  and  poetry.     Aristophanes  expressed 


490  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

this  idea  in  The  Birds  by  calling  words  wings  for  the  eleva- 
tion of  human  nature. 

Is  there  any  justification  for  such  faith  in  literature? 
Is  literature  ever  a  national  or  progressive  force,  or  is  it, 
as  De  Tocqueville  asserted,  always  subordinate  to  social 
conditions  and  political  institutions?  It  is  both,  now 
cause,  now  effect.  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  was  unmistakably 
the  product  of  the  economic,  political  and  ethical  conditions 
of  America  in  the  fifties ;  but  it  was  just  as  unmistakably 
a  causal  factor  in  the  upheaval  of  the  sixties.  The  popular 
song  Lilliburlero,  crude  and  trifling  as  it  now  sounds  to  us, 
is  said  to  have  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  great  English 
Revolution  of  1688.  It  cast  in  popular  form  the  racial 
and  religious  prejudices  of  the  day  and  served  as  a  battering 
ram  against  the  House  of  Stuart  and  the  Catholic  Church. 
A  contemporary  anonymous  writer  was  not  far  afield  when 
he  stated  Lord  Wharton's  conviction  that  by  this  song  he 
had  "sung  a  deluded  prince  out  of  three  kingdoms."  James 
G.  Blaine  lost  his  race  for  the  presidency  partly  at  least 
through  his  ill-timed  reference  to  the  forces  of  "Rum, 
Romanism,  and  Rebelhon"  which  opposed  him.  The 
alliterative  aphorism  proved  a  boomerang  more  effective 
than  tons  of  campaign  literature.  ^'Marching  through 
Georgia  "  sung  by  campaign  glee  clubs  or  played  by  brass 
bands  at  the  head  of  torchlight  processions  has  probably 
won  more  votes  for  the  Republican  party  in  the  last  forty 
years  than  all  its  stump  orators  or  campaign  literature. 
The  Spanish-American  war  will  never  stand  for  much 
to  the  American  people,  largely  because  it  generated  no 
first-rate  song  or  ballad.  The  popular  cry  "To  hell  with 
Spain,"  while  it  had  what  the  short  story  writers  call 
"punch",  was  too  slender  a  sentiment  to  endure.  It 
lacked  the  good  humor  and  vision  that  make  for  popular 
or  epoch-making  literature. 


THE   ARTISTS  49 1 

These  simple  illustrations  indicate  the  power  of  litera- 
ture to  work  social  change.  But  social  change  is  not  prog- 
ress. Now  should  literature  be  reckoned  a  force  for 
progress  also,  and,  if  so,  why?  For  two  reasons,  the  one 
psychologic,  the  other  sociologic.  Taine  said,  and  rightly, 
"The  proper  office  of  literature  is  to  note  the  sentiments." 
Since  ideas  can  only  be  minted  for  popular  circulation 
through  stamping  them  with  feelings,  it  is  evident  that 
Hterature,  especially  exoteric  literature,  is  one  of  the  readi- 
est means  in  this  process  of  mintage.  Or  if  we  prefer  a 
more  philosophic  view  of  the  function  of  literature,  Pro- 
fessor Corson  has  clearly  stated  it : 

"Literature,  more  especially  poetic  and  dramatic  liter- 
ature, is  the  expression  in  letters  of  the  spiritual,  cooperat- 
ing with  the  intellectual,  man,  the  former  being  the  primary, 
dominant  coefficient."  ^ 

The  sociological  argument  for  literature,  especially  poetry 
and  the  drama,  grows  out  of  the  fact  that  both  are  indis- 
solubly  united  in  their  origins  with  primitive  pantomime, 
music  and  the  dance ;  all  were  fused  into  those  ancient 
ceremonies  of  magic  and  social  polity  whereby  the  gods 
were  appeased  and  human  neighbors  coerced  into  peace 
and  unanimity.  Curious  examples  of  how  poetry  might 
heal  feuds  between  individuals  no  less  than  between  groups 
sometimes  crop  out.  Crantz,  for  instance,  in  his  History 
of  Greenland,  describes  an  eighteenth  century  hyperborean 
singing  combat  somewhat  similar  to  those  noted  by  Darm- 
stetter  among  the  Arabs  : 

"If  one  Greenlander  imagines  himself  injured  by  another, 
he  betrays  not  the  least  trace  of  vexation  or  wrath,  much 
less  revenge,  but  he  composes  a  satirical  poem :  this  he 
repeats  so  often  with  singing  and  dancing  in  the  presence 
of  his  domestics,  and  especially  the  women,  till  they  have 

^  The  Aims  of  Literary  Study,  24. 


492  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

all  got  it  in  their  memory.  Then  he  publishes  a  challenge 
everywhere,  that  he  will  fight  a  duel  with  his  antagonist, 
not  with  a  sword  but  a  song.  .  .  .  The  whole  body  of 
beholders  constitute  the  jury,  and  bestow  the  laurel,  and 
afterwards  the  two  parties  are  the  best  friends."  ^ 

The  two  chief  hindrances  to  literature  as  a  social  power 
are  its  lack  of  moral  sincerity  and  its  remoteness  from  aver- 
age life.  Too  many  writers  are  merely  men  of  letters  who 
very  skillfully  'play  the  sedulous  ape,'  exploit  the  fashion 
or  prejudice  of  the  hour,  manifest  pleasing  facility  and  win 
great  popularity,  but  whose  ideas  go  no  deeper  than  the 
a-b,  ah  of  the  Horn  Book.  The  chief  difficulty,  however, 
lies  in  the  inaccessibility  of  literature  to  the  great  mass 
of  us  upon  whom  lies  the  burden  of  sustaining  and  perpetu- 
ating the  achievements  of  our  race.  Literature  still  has 
too  much  of  belles-lettrism  about  it  to  serve  very  seriously 
the  cause  of  social  progress.  With  a  few  exceptions  it  is 
largely  the  mouthpiece  of  a  few  privileged  circles.  There  is 
too  much  affectation  of  the  purist,  the  precious,  the  esoteric. 
Literature  really  to  serve  must  not  live  in  tiny  jeweled 
private  chapels,  but  must  fill  to  overflowing  a  vast  Gothic 
cathedral  capable. of  holding  a  whole  city  population,  or 
must  stand  the  test  of  the  hillside  amphitheater,  with  its 
glare  of  sun,  its  dazzling  blue  sky,  and  its  cheering,  yes  sweat- 
ing thousands.  "Not  until,  from  some  cause  or  other, 
the  whole  population  shall  be  brought  to  interest  itself 
actively  in  intellectual  affairs  will  it  be  possible  for  a  truly 
national  literature  to  come  forth  which  shall  become  the 
common  property  of  all  classes  of  society,"  concludes 
Odin  after  his  profound  study  of  literary  genius.^  And  it 
will  become  the  common  property  of  all  classes  only  if  it 
springs  out  of  the  common  heart,  only  if  it  reflects  the  com- 

^Op.  cit.  i.,  178. 

^  La  Genese  des  Grands  Hommes,  564. 


THE  ARTISTS  493 

mon  origin  and  the  common  destiny  of  us  all,  only  if  it 
be  allowed  to  choose  its  subject  and  its  own  manner  of 
expression.  No  literature,  no  science,  and  no  art  can  grow 
in  an  age  of  repression.  Puritanism  produced  but  a  scanty 
crop  of  real  literature ;  Catholicism,  but  little  science ; 
Judaism,  no  art  worth  consideration.  The  decree  of  the 
Council  of  Nice  in  787,  which  declared  that  the  subjects 
of  painting,  their  arrangement,  etc.,  was  the  province  of 
the  clergy  and  the  execution  alone  that  of  the  painters, 
was  almost  fatal  to  art.  The  sense  of  proportion  and 
form,  likewise  imagination  and  personal  vision,  were  lost; 
stiffness,  brutahty,  ugliness,  and  steriHty  prevailed. 

Of  course  this  view  of  literature  throws  overboard  all 
pretense  of  art  for  art's  sake.  It  frankly  requires  that  by 
the  very  charter  of  its  hberties  art  shall  have  a  definite 
moral  purpose,  that  it  shall  have  a  distinctly  social  mis- 
sion. Many  straws  indicate  that  hterary  art  is  conceiving 
its  function  anew.  One  of  the  minor  French  poets,  Clovis 
Hugues,  has  perhaps  most  vigorously  expressed  the  social 
mission  of  the  poet  in  his  poetical  credo. 

"The  poet  has  a  social  function.  It  is  his  province  to 
glorify  the  beautiful,  but  it  also  belongs  to  him  to  serve 
the  just,  which  is  its  highest  representation.  .  .  .  We 
must  love  and  sing  of  the  rose  because  it  is  beautiful ;  but 
we  must  also  remember  that  its  thorns  often  crowned  the 
thinker's  brow.  Poetry  is  only  great  if  it  completes 
dream  by  idea,  idea  by  action." 

It  was  such  sentiments  that  won  for  him  early  the  title 
of  the  "poete  du  socialisme."  We  have  already  seen 
how  the  greatest  living  French  literary  genius  found  him- 
self only  when  he  found  a  social  cause  to  which  he  might 
devote  his  powers  —  the  cause  of  the  humble  and  dis- 
inherited. We  have  also  seen  how  Ibsen  conceived  the 
function  of  drama  as  wholly  social.     And   the  greatest 


494  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

living  English  dramatist,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  under  a 
mask  of  facetiousness  plants  himself  squarely  on  the  same 
platform.  In  the  Preface  to  his  Showing-Up  of  Blanco 
Posnet  he  declares : 

"I  am  not  an  ordinary  playwright  in  general  practice. 
I  am  a  speciahst  in  immoral  and  heretical  plays.  My 
reputation  has  been  gained  by  my  persistent  struggle  to 
force  the  public  to  reconsider  its  morals.  In  particular, 
I  regard  much  current  morality  as  to  economic  and  sexual 
relations  as  disastrously  wrong ;  and  I  regard  certain  doc- 
trines of  the  Christian  religion  as  understood  in  England 
to-day,  with  abhorrence.  I  write  plays  with  the  deliberate 
object  of  converting  the  nation  to  my  opinions  in  these 
matters.  I  have  no  other  effectual  incentive  to  write 
plays.  ..." 

Give  literature  a  conscious  social  mission  conceived  in 
heroic  terms ;  and  teach  it  not  after  the  manner  of  differ- 
ential calculus  or  soil-analysis  but,  as  Professor  Corson 
taught  it,  with  the  Spirit  and  with  power,  or  as  the  late 
President  Harper  is  said  to  have  taught  Hebrew,  like  a 
succession  of  hairbreadth  escapes,  and  literature  must 
become  the  common  property  of  us  all  and  join  in  that 
stream  of  energy  which  is  raising  us  out  of  the  pit. 


In  the  Graphic  and  Plastic  Arts 

But  little  remains  to  be  said  on  the  role  of  the  other  arts. 
What  apphes  to  hterature  applies  equally  well  in  general 
to  the  plastic  arts  or  to  music.  Real  art  never  has  been 
divorced  from  common  life,  and  from  this  constant  asso- 
ciation must  always  be  reckoned  with  in  analyzing  human 
development.  For  man  always  struggles  for  happiness, 
not  mere  subsistence.     And  art  is  the  expression  of  joy 


THE  ARTISTS  495 

in  life.  Hence  the  aesthetic  motives  tend  to  overlay  the 
mere  economic  basis  of  desires.  The  tension  between 
desire  and  fulfillment  sets  in  higher  up.  The  symphony 
of  life  is  played  in  a  higher  key  with  greater  complexity 
and  refinement  of  instrumentation.  All  social  evolution 
and  individual  culture  are  a  constant  cultivation  of  the 
higher  levels  of  idea  and  sentiment  at  the  expense  of  the 
lower.  Progress  is  a  growth  in  imaginative  power,  in 
ability  to  discount  present  for  future,  lower  for  higher. 
It  is  partially  true  that  memory  of  pain  was  the  goad  to 
progress  in  lower  stages  of  culture ;  but  pleasurable  anti- 
cipation is  certainly  more  active  now.  Thus  the  higher 
prudential  and  pleasurable  motives  supplant  the  old 
retrospective-pain-economy.  The  sign  and  seal  of  this 
supplanting  is  the  healthy  growth  of  art.  Art,  conse- 
quently, is  not  only  an  index  of  past  achievements ;  it 
may  become  the  indispensable  element  to  future  advance, 
particularly  if  we  accept  civic  ideals  or  democratic  ideals 
as  enduring  elements  of  human  progress. 

The  art  impulse  is  one  of  the  astonishing  marks  of  even 
neohthic  man.  His  cave-paintings,  carvings  in  bone  and 
stone,  spear  heads,  chipped  axes,  all  reveal  aesthetic  grop- 
ings.  Hence  we  can  almost  say  that  with  self-conscious- 
ness comes  art.  Therefore  art  becomes,  if  not  nature,  at 
least  second  nature.  And  its  role  increases  in  proportion 
as  humanity  climbs  up  out  of  the  pit.  From  the  sociologi- 
cal standpoint  one  of  man's  most  wonderful  achievements 
is  his  art.  A  brief  analysis  will  show  why  both  theoretical 
and  applied  sociology  are  interested  in  it. 

First  of  all,  art  is  a  social  product.  The  artist  is  not  a 
special  creation,  a  sort  of  divinely  constituted  mandarin 
who  sits  apart  from  his  fellows,  owing  them  nothing,  —  a 
Samuel  dedicated  from  his  youth  to  the  service  of  the  god- 
dess, or  idol,  Beauty.     Granting  his  claim  that  he  must 


496  THEORIES  OF  SOCL\L  PROGRESS 

be  intolerant  and  narrow  does  not  confer  on  him  the  patent 
of  self-sufficiency.  Art  is  not  a  mysterious  El  Dorado  hid- 
den by  taboos  from  the  common  gaze  or  aspiration.  It  is 
part  and  parcel  of  the  same  history  and  pohtics,  commerce 
and  religion,  that  have  yielded  us  our  Constitution,  our 
sewing  machine,  our  fireless  cooker,  our  women's  clubs. 
A  glance  at  savage  art  will  illustrate.  Savage  art,  while 
to  a  certain  extent  an  expression  of  the  play  instinct,  is  at 
the  same  time  tremendously  serious  and  bound  up  with 
every  activity  of  life.  The  South  Sea  Islander  carves  his 
spear  or  his  canoe  because  of  love  of  line  and  color,  because 
of  pride  in  his  skill,  because  of  a  practical  belief  in  the 
magical  virtues  of  the  figures  he  cuts  and  colors.  He 
tattooes  his  skin  because  the  design  and  color  tickle  his 
fancy,  but  still  more  because  his  tattoo  marks  give  him  a 
rank  among  his  fellows,  indicate  his  nationality,  and  will 
serve  him  as  a  passport  to  the  gloomy  world  hereafter. 
Indeed  the  savage  decorates  his  spear  or  his  person  not 
altogether  from  vanity,  but  rather  in  the  spirit  in  which 
we  write  genealogies,  or  make  prayers,  or  do  other  work 
pleasing  to  the  gods  and  our  fellows.  Furthermore,  sav- 
age art  is  a  means  of  tribal  control  and  government.^  All 
the  savage  arts  are  just  so  many  bonds  of  union  between 
the  tribesman  and  his  fellows  here  in  this  world,  and  with 
the  ghosts  and  gods  beyond  the  grave. 

Graphic  art  may  function  as  literature  in  generating 
social  sympathy  and  cementing  a  social  group.  Thus  Pope 
Gregory  in  the  seventh  century  decreed  that  paintings 
fill  the  churches  in  order  that  those  who  could  not  read 
in  books  might  at  least  read  on  the  walls.  A  thousand 
years  before,  Chinese  art  had  become  epic,  as  it  were, 
being  devoted  to  the  representation  of  national  heroes 
and  the  portrayal  of  sages.  The  hand  of  Confucius  is 
^  Cf .  ante,  chap,  xix,  on  the  role  of  dancing  in  social  solidarity. 


THE  ARTISTS  497 

evident  here,  for  like  Plato,  he  felt  that  art  could  be  made 
to  serve  social  ends. 

Secondly,  art  is  a  moral  agency.  Its  purpose  and  func- 
tion is  the  deepening  and  broadening  of  our  sympathies 
through  stimulating  healthy  emotion.  Tolstoi  said,  "Art 
remains  what  it  was  and  what  it  must  be,  nothing  but  the 
infection  by  one  man  of  another,  or  of  others,  with  the 
feelings  experienced  by  the  infector."  Guyau  carries  the 
thought  a  step  farther:  "The  artistic  emotion  then  is 
just  the  social  emotion  which  a  life  analogous  to  our  own 
(and  made  by  the  artist)  produces  in  us."  All  the  arts 
are  at  bottom  nothing  but  means  of  condensing  individual 
emotion  to  render  it  transmissible  to  others.  We  might 
define  art  in  this  light  as  emotion  so  stamped  and  minted 
as  to  circulate  and  become  social ;  that  is,  as  an  emotional 
means  of  communion  with  our  fellows. 

In  this  sense  it  enables  us  to  live  the  lives  and  adventures 
of  others,  where  in  default  of  it  we  should  be  confined  to 
our  own  narrow  round  of  experiences.  It  is  imagination, 
and  thus  participation  in  a  larger  Hfe.  It  is  communion, 
and  as  man  is  by  nature  social,  he  has  a  universal  need  for 
communion,  hence  a  universal  art  hunger.  Prison  art 
and  prison  inscriptions  nicely  illustrate  this  theory  of  the 
origin  and  function  of  art,  namely,  the  communication  of 
feehngs  to  stir  up  sympathy.  Prisoners  go  to  the  greatest 
lengths  in  their  often  crude  and  naive  attempts  to  communi- 
cate with  their  fellows  through  artistic  expression.  They 
will  spend  months  carving  nut-shells  or  whittling  boats 
or  writing  poetry  or  sketching,  not  merely  to  kill  time  but 
because  whenever  the  average  human  being  is  isolated  for 
any  considerable  length  of  time  from  his  fellows,  he  feels 
the  need  of  embodying  some  literary  or  artistic  expression 
of  himself.^     This  desire  for  self-expression,   however,   is 

^  Cf.  Ellis,  The  Criminal,  211. 
2k 


498  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

quite  another  thing  from  hunger  for  absolute  beauty  or 
skillful  technique.  Indeed  prison  graphic  art  is  usually  very 
rough  and  coarse,  frequently  highly  expressive,  but  rarely 
or  never  beautiful ;  its  subjects  spring  from  the  criminal's 
interests  —  sex,  acts  of  violence  and  prowess,  or  contests 
with  the  law.  This  bears  out  the  dicta  of  that  group  of 
critics  who  tell  us  that  art  is  not  craftsmanship,  nor  beauty, 
nor  has  it  aught  to  do  with  beauty.  Beauty  is  only  one 
element  in  life,  one  of  the  things  that  art  as  a  language 
of  the  finer  emotions  seeks  to  share  and  communicate. 
Art  then  is  essentially  the  means  of  registering  and  com- 
municating sympathies.  If  so,  we  have  a  standard  by 
which  to  judge  works  of  art,  both  as  works  of  art  and  as 
elements  in  progress :  do  they  stir  up  sympathy  with  the 
best  and  worthiest  things  about  us?  It  is  the  same  old 
test  that  Plato  would  apply  to  music  and  poetry :  do  they 
communicate  greatness  to  the  soul?  Do  they  initiate 
us  into  the  great  mysteries  of  the  universe?  Or  do  they 
merely  stir  an  admiration  for  the  cleverness  of  the  artist? 
But  what  of  the  common  objection  that  while  art  may 
be  moral  enough  artists  are  immoral?  It  may  be  true 
that  some  painters  are  notoriously  loose  in  their  living. 
But  no  great  artist  was  ever  loose  and  immoral  when  he 
produced  a  great  painting.  The  fine  frenzy  of  artistry 
is  a  refiner's  fire  that  drives  out  common  grossness.  This 
is  why  Huysmans  cried:  "Art  is  the  only  clean  thing  on 
earth,  except  holiness."  It  is  not  abihty  to  draw  or  appre- 
ciate color  values  that  creates  a  masterpiece;  the  artist's 
technique  is  merely  the  mechanical  expression  of  his  own 
superior  vision  and  greatness  of  heart,  or  in  other  words, 
his  own  indefinable  nobiHty  and  moraUty.^ 

^  It  is  this  function  of  mental  and  moral  enlargement  that  should  rank 
the  artist  along  with  the  scientist,  the  teacher,  or  the  inventor  in  any  social 
readjustment  having  as  its  purpose  the  organization  of  conditions  favorable 
to  creative  thought. 


THE  ARTISTS  499 

It  is  this  finer  vision  of  the  good  and  true  that  permits 
art  to  "improve  upon  Nature"  and  to  kindle  love  for  Na- 
ture itself.     Browning  in  his  Fra  Lippo  Lippi  says : 

"  We're  made  so  that  we  love 
First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have  passed 
Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  cared  to  see." 

A  new  love  of  contour  and  mass  of  mountains  we  may 
catch  from  Leonardo's  fascinating  dim  blue  backgrounds. 
Light  and  clouds  take  on  a  new  significance  from  Turner's 
brush.  If  we  have  never  taken  thought  for  cherry  blos- 
soms, a  Japanese  artist  will  force  their  beauty  home  to  us. 
Why  are  these  things  so?  In  a  word,  it  is  because  love 
begets  love.  The  love  of  a  noble  artist  soul  for  mountain 
or  cloud  or  cherry  blossom  kindles  a  like  love  in  us.  He  is 
an  artist  because  he  loves,  not  because  he  can  paint.  Hol- 
man  Hunt,  the  Enghsh  artist,  lived  his  own  maxim,  namely, 
that  "art  inspiration  is  the  redundance  of  an  overflowing 
heart.     It  is  the  spirit  of  love." 

When  we  speak  of  art  as  having  an  essential  moral  pur- 
pose we  do  not  mean  that  the  artist  is  to  say  to  himself 
as  he  works :  Now  I  must  make  this  figure  teach  not  to 
steal,  that  one  not  to  kill,  the  other  not  to  commit  adultery. 
But  rather  that,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  he  communi- 
cates through  his  work  a  deep  feeling  for  beauty  and  truth, 
an  emotional  suggestion  which  may  be  capitahzed  into  social 
morality.     This  was  what  Brunetiere  meant  when  he  said  : 

"Art  has  its  object  or  end  outside  and  beyond  itself; 
and  if  this  object  is  not  precisely  moral  it  is  social,  which 
is  almost  the  same  thing.  Art  has  a  social  function ;  and 
its  true  morality  is  the  consciousness  of  having  accom- 
plished this  function." 

In  estimating  the  value  of  art  to  social  development  and 
the  expansion  of  the  human  personahty  one  must  be  careful 


SOO  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

to  avoid  the  fallacy  of  confounding  the  evolution  of  art 
itself  with  art  as  an  outlet  for  the  impulse  to  create,  to  love, 
and  to  worship.  I  do  not  care  to  enter  here  into  the  old 
controversy  as  to  whether  art  has  advanced  or  declined 
since  the  age  of  Pericles.  It  certainly  has  developed  since 
the  Stone  Age.  And  Sumner  was  just  as  surely  extrava- 
gant in  declaring  that  while  useful  arts  advance  the  fine 
arts  do  not.^  Some  fine  arts  have  improved  noticeably 
in  the  last  two  millenniums,  notably  painting  and  textiles. 
But  in  general  we  must  accept  the  principle  that  each  suc- 
cessive age  redistributes  its  energies  and  reapportions  by 
a  pragmatic  rule  of  division  of  labor,  the  functions  to  be 
required  of  its  various  institutions  and  arts.  That  age 
which  skimps  its  art  atrophies  a  very  large  part  of  its  crea- 
tive energies.  That  society  which  consciously  cultivates 
its  art  impulses  Hves  broadly  and  stamps  its  name  upon 
an  epoch  in  human  history. 

Let  me  summarize :  Art  has  served  as  a  means  to  human 
development  in  so  far  as  it  has  refined  man's  interests  in 
self-maintenance,  self -perpetuation,  and  self-gratification, 
or  as  it  has  ministered  to  his  altruistic  and  transcendental 
impulses.  It  has  created  less  and  less  gross  satisfactions 
for  the  needs  of  food,  clothing,  and  shelter.  It  has  created 
an  atmosphere  of  nobler  sentiments  surrounding  the  rela- 
tion of  the  sexes ;  love  conceived  by  art  transcends  mere 
physiology.  Art  widens  the  whole  area  of  the  aesthetic 
impulses  and  thus  broadens  and  refines  the  methods  of 
self-cultivation  and  self-expression.  It  has  always  been 
a  powerful  aid  to  group  cohesion,  whether  in  the  form  of 
song,  dancing,  the  drama,  poetry,  painting,  or  the  plastic 
arts.  And  finally  through  its  connection  with  religion 
and  philosophy  it  sustains  the  transcendental  interests 
through  the  worship  of  universal  harmony  and  beauty. 

'  Folkways,  p.  604. 


THE  ARTISTS  501 

Herbart  held  that  art  was  unnecessary  to  life.  He  was 
wrong.  Life  in  itself  amounts  to  little.  It  is  the  "good 
life"  that  counts.  It  is  beauty  that  opens  up  the  highest 
values  of  life.     Hamlet  said  : 

"What  is  a  man, 
If  his  chief  good  and  market  of  his  time 
Be  but  to  sleep  and  feed  ?     A  beast,  no  more." 

Art  has  widened  and  deepened  the  "chief  good  and  market 
of  his  time  "  ;  hence  has  helped  deliver  man  from  the  matrix 
of  the  beast. 


PART    IV 

IMPLICATIONS  AND   CONCLUSIONS 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

SOME    EDUCATIONAL    IMPLICATIONS    OF    SOCIAL 

PROGRESS 


Civilization  may  be  looked  at  from  two  standpoints, 
as  we  have  already  hinted:  first,  as  the  necessary  conse- 
quence of  man's  nature  and  the  forces  which  have  con- 
strained him ;  second  as,  in  part  at  least,  the  result  of  his 
own  conscious  design.  The  first  is  civilization  by  divine 
fiat  or  natural  necessity  or  by  definition.  The  second  is 
civihzation  by  choice  and  aspiration.^  Both  views  com- 
mingle in  any  true  view  of  human  development,  especially 
in  its  earlier  stages.  Most  of  past  civilization  is,  so  to 
speak,  of  rather  an  instinctive  type,  a  more  or  less  uncon- 
scious electing  of  fairly  effective  means  for  attaining  on 
the  whole  fairly  worthy  ends.  I  say  this  achievement 
was  rather  instinctive  than  rational  and  conscious,  for  it 
was  more  or  less  spontaneous  and  it  was  comparatively 
easy.  "  Nature  "  is  vastly  more  amenable  to  human  direc- 
tion than  is  man's  own  nature.  Consequently,  as  Ward 
points  out,^  material  civilization  has  moved  more  rapidly 
than  moral  progress.  Nature  has  been  fairly  tamed  and 
gives  up  her  treasures  freely.  Man  is  confronted  with 
the  tremendous  problem  of  squaring  himself  with  himself 
in  the  effort  to  utilize  these  riches  justly.  Future  civili- 
zation must,  in  consequence,  become  more  and  more  ra- 

*  Cf.  Ward,  Pure  Sociology,  20-1.  ^  Pure  Sociology,  255. 

505 


5o6  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

tional,  self-motivated,  definitely  willed.  The  haphazard, 
unconscious,  and  halting  progress  of  the  past  may  be  con- 
sidered simply  as  the  preparation  for  a  conscious  and 
deliberate  movement  toward  social  reorganization  in  the 
interests  of  a  program  of  conscious  advance.  The  problem 
of  social  progress,  and  therefore  of  the  social  arts,  is  whether 
societal  organization  shall  always  be  left  to  nature  and 
chance  development,  shall  be  allowed  to  struggle  aimlessly 
along,  or  whether  it  can  be  made  the  subject  of  a  specific 
science  with  its  appropriate  technique ;  in  other  words, 
whether  intelligence  can  assert  its  mastery  over  the  drift 
of  passion. 

We  agree  with  Ward  that  social  progress  is  artificial 
in  contradistinction  to  racial  evolution  which  is  natural 
and  more  or  less  blind  ;  it  is  the  fruit  of  purpose  and  design, 
however  vaguely  or  crudely  formulated.  All  the  science 
and  philosophy  of  the  past  and  of  the  present  will  avail 
only  as  they  contribute  to  the  formulating  of  an  "articu- 
late social  philosophy."  In  other  words,  if  we  are  to  avoid 
the  wastes  and  incoherences  of  the  past  and  if  the  sum  of 
our  social  efforts  is  to  have  the  success  which  we  anticipate 
and  which  it  deserves,  a  definite  social  will  must  be  evoked 
and  allowed  to  function  with  increasing  definiteness.  Will, 
as  Wundt  conceives  it,  may  have  created  society :  from 
atom  and  animal  group  to  human  society  we  may  see  only 
will-units ;  but  it  remains  for  society  in  the  future  to 
demonstrate  Wundt's  definition  of  it  as  a  real  Gesamt- 
personlichkeit.  It  is  a  person  barely  roused  from  deep 
sleep.  In  a  Httle  while  this  Leviathan  may  reach  the 
deadly  serious  stage  of  Rodin's  Penseur.  From  that  rapt 
meditation  on  itself  shall  come  the  will-to-transformation. 

Is  all  this  moonshine?  Can  society  by  taking  thought 
create  itself  anew  ?  Man  has  hitherto,  according  to  Ferrero, 
produced  two  types  of  civilization :    the  violent  and  the 


EDUCATIONAL   IMPLICATIONS  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS     507 

fraudulent.^  Can  man  by  any  means  whatsoever  now  at 
his  disposal  do  anything  towards  producing  a  new  type 
of  civilization  marked  by  justice,  brotherhood,  and  service? 
I  believe  we  can.  Our  analysis  of  how  the  social  person- 
ality is  built  up  and  orientated  supplied  the  evidence  for 
this  belief.  It  ought  to  be  possible  to  build  up  a  civiliza- 
tion in  which  the  virtues  of  intelligent  self-discipline,  cour- 
age, moral  vigor,  and  community  sense  would  predominate. 
What  is  more  to  the  point,  we  have  already  at  our  disposal 
at  least  the  beginnings  of  forces  wherewith  to  propel  our- 
selves onward  to  that  desired  end.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
appeal  to  supra-rational  sanctions  or  powers.  Society 
is  a  stupendous  storage  battery  of  energies  equal  to  the 
task  if  it  once  gets  a  clear  vision  of  its  own  ends.  It  will 
modify  itself  in  the  interests  of  advance  and  nothing 
outside  of  it  can  so  modify  it.  No  one  has  more  clearly 
seen  or  stated  this  than  John  Morley.  In  the  essay  On 
Compromise  he  wrote : 

"It  would  be  odd  if  the  theory  which  makes  progress 
depend  on  modification  forbade  us  to  attempt  to  modify. 
When  it  is  said  that  the  various  successive  changes  in 
thought  and  institution  present  and  consummate  themselves 
spontaneously,  no  one  means  by  spontaneity  that  they 
come  to  pass  independently  of  human  effort  and  volition. 
On  the  contrary,  this  energy  of  the  members  of  the  society 
is  one  of  the  spontaneous  elements.  It  is  quite  as  indis- 
pensable as  any  other  of  them,  if  indeed  it  be  not  more  so. 
Progress  depends  upon  tendencies  and  forces  in  a  community. 
But  of  these  tendencies  and  forces,  the  organs  and  repre- 
sentatives must  plainly  be  found  among  the  men  and 
women  of  the  community,  and  cannot  possibly  be  found 
anywhere  else.  Progress  is  not  automatic,  in  the  sense 
that  if  we  were  all  to  be  cast  into  a  deep  slumber  for  the 
space  of  a  generation,  we  should  awake  to  find  ourselves 

i"Violenti  e  Frodolenti  in  Romagna,"  //  Mondo  Criminale  Italiano, 
1894. 


5o8  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

in  a  greatly  improved  social  state.  The  world  only  grows 
better,  even  in  the  moderate  degree  in  which  it  does  grow 
better,  because  people  wish  that  it  should,  and  take  the 
right  steps  to  make  it  better."  ^ 

There  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  philosophy  of  man  which 
makes  him  not  human,  nor  a  citizen  of  this  country,  but 
rather  a  child  of  the  Infinite,  who  is  merely  a  pilgrim  and 
a  stranger  in  this  world  of  illusion.  Hence  to  such  a  phi- 
losophy there  is  no  use  in  voluntary  effort  at  progress. 
Man  is  already  perfect  and  no  amount  of  willing  or  strug- 
gling can  make  him  any  more  so.  To  those  who  acknowl- 
edge this  philosophy  I  can  only  say  that  the  same  Infinite 
which  begat  both  them  and  their  philosophy  has  seen 
fit  to  plunge  them  into  a  world  of  problems  and  activities, 
a  world  which  at  least  constrains  them  to  eat  and  sleep 
and  procreate  their  kind.  We  are  all  of  us  living  in  the 
infinite ;  still  we  must  determine  and  definitely  choose  to 
bring  our  mortal  and  finite  history  up  to  the  plane  of  the 
immortal  and  infinite,  and  into  harmony  with  it.  Hence, 
as  Morley  insists,  we  must  not  so  misunderstand  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  "as  to  beheve  that  the  world  is 
improved  by  some  mystic  and  self-acting  social  discipline, 
which  dispenses  with  the  necessity  of  pertinacious  attack 
upon  institutions  which  have  outlived  their  time,  and  in- 
terests that  have  lost  their  justification."  The  religion 
and  the  social  philosophy  of  progress  are  mihtant  and  active ; 
there  is  no  place  for  fatuity  or  quietism  in  them. 

I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  progress  into  the  millennium 
is  to  come  about  like  a  stage  transformation-scene.  We 
shall  not  go  to  bed  in  an  age  of  exploitation  and  wake  up 
in  one  of  service.  The  making  over  of  human  nature  and 
of  human  society  must  be  gradual  to  be  permanent.     Hence 

*  Op.  cit.,  ed.  1906,  pp.  209-10. 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS     509 

there  must  be  moderation  in  all  things,  even  in  self-criti- 
cism. This  is  no  time  for  morbidness  over  past  stupidity 
or  regrets  over  the  snail's  pace  at  which  we  seem  to  have 
traveled.  We  have  no  surplus  energy  for  tears.  The 
job  of  hauling  society  up  to  a  basis  of  justice  and  service 
is  a  heroic  one  and  demands  every  ounce  of  energy  in  us. 
Up  to  this  point  the  various  theories  of  human  progress 
have  on  the  whole  regarded  man  either  as  the  pawn  of 
exterior  powers  and  forces  — ■  cosmic,  divine,  chemical, 
biologic,  climatic,  geographical,  economic  —  which  them- 
selves aimed  perhaps  at  some  ulterior  goal  of  which  man 
was  ignorant :  or  as  only  indirectly  conspiring  at  progress, 
his  direct  aims  being  adaptation  to  environment,  storing 
up  capital,  subduing  enemies,  enjoying  his  family.  Now 
we  must  look  at  man  as  a  conscious  agent  aiming  directly 
at  his  own  improvement  and  advance.  In  other  words 
we  are  confronted  with  the  problem  of  whether  man  can 
lift  himself  by  his  own  bootstraps.  To  avoid  any  possible 
ambiguity  we  now  propose  to  answer  this  question  with  a 
categorical  yes :  man  not  only  can,  but  must  lift  himself 
by  his  bootstraps ;  that  is  the  only  appointed  way  for  his 
salvation.  To  be  sure  he  has  in  the  past  made  a  very  poor 
show  of  this  method  of  lifting  himself.  But  the  trouble 
was,  he  did  not  know  he  could  do  it ;  indeed  he  scarcely 
knew  whether  he  had  boots  on  at  all  or  not ;  and  certainly 
he  did  not  know  that  his  arms  could  connect  up  with  his 
bootstraps.  He  did  not  even  know  that  he  could  lift 
himself  up  into  the  air  and  navigate  in  a  medium  lighter 
than  himself.  Fifty  years  ago  a  good  deal  of  time  was 
wasted  in  proving  how  absurd  was  the  idea  of  airships. 
And  about  the  same  time  more  breath  and  ink  were  wasted 
in  proving  how  man  is  a  mere  focal  point  for  a  complex 
of  physical  and  chemical  forces,  and  therefore  that  he  is 
the  football  of  blind  forces,  blinder  than  Fate,  urging  and 


5IO  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

prodding  him  onward,  but  whether  up  or  down  or  in  a 
circle  nobody  knew. 

Fortunately  we  are  getting  out  of  this  scientific  treadmill. 
But  we  are  still  a  long  day's  journey  from  the  full  knowl- 
edge of  how  to  utilize  the  proceeds  of  human  achievement 
in  a  workable  program  for  human  advance.  The  future 
is  not  something  already  made  which  we  must  positively 
await,  said  Michelet ;  it  is  for  us  to  make  it  what  we  want 
it  to  be.  Yes,  but  how  ?  The  great  difficulty  is  that  society 
is  not  yet  clearly  self-conscious,  self-knowing.  Just  as 
man  as  an  object  of  nature  is  the  last  thing  to  which  man 
has  given  serious  attention,  just  as  the  breeding  of  men 
comes  at  the  tail-end  of  a  century  or  two  of  thremmatology 
and  animal  husbandry,  so  knowledge  of  its  own  nature 
and  powers  is  the  latest  quest  of  society.  The  most  recent 
infants  born  to  the  family  of  sciences  are  just  the  sciences 
that  deal  with  this  self-revelation  of  the  nature  of  society, 
namely,  psychology  and  sociology.  Men  are  beginning 
only  faintly  to  glimpse  their  real  social  nature ;  and  human 
groups  are  still  stumbling  about  in  the  twilight  like  blind 
men  among  tombs  trying  to  know  themselves,  trying  to 
get  out  of  their  toils,  struggling  to  formulate  some  purposive 
goal  and  to  lay  out  a  highway  thither.  If  Goethe  was 
right,  and  we  must  win  self-knowledge  through  eating 
our  bread  with  bitter  tears  and  through  nights  of 
sorrow,  human  society  has  certainly  paid  the  full  price 
and  ought  now  to  be  in  a  fair  way  to  receive  its  promised 
guerdon. 

But  where  is  the  mighty  agent  which  will  bring  about 
this  conscious  and  well-articulated  plan  of  social  advance  ? 
Education,  reply  the  teachers  and  some  sociologists. 
Dewey  speaks  of  the  school  as  a  fundamental  means  of 
social  progress.  "To  an  extent  characteristic  of  no  other 
institution,  save  that  of  the  state  itself,  the  school  has  power 


EDUCATIOiNAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF   SOCIAL    PROGRESS     51 1 

to  modify  the  social  order."  ^  Ellwood  points  to  education 
as  "the  chief  means  to  which  society  must  look  for  all 
substantial  social  progress."  ^ 

But  the  problem  of  education  as  a  factor  in  social  progress 
is  not  so  simple  as  might  appear.  It  is  one  thing  to  say 
with  Ward  that  education  is  the  paramount  "social  force," 
and  quite  another  to  claim  that  it  is  the  supreme  or  even 
an  important  element  in  "progress."  How,  if  at  all,  is 
education  a  social  force?  Does  it  counteract  natural 
selection?  Is  it  an  independent  force?  If  so,  how  can 
it  be  determined  and  measured?  Can  you  classify  "civic 
worth"  by  it?  Can  you  measure  it  by  statistics  of  crime 
or  insanity?  Or  by  relation  to  health  and  longevity? 
Or  by  increase  of  wealth  and  earning  power  in  the  individual 
or  group?  Or  by  the  prevalence  of  general  well-being 
and  the  capacity  to  enjoy?  Or  by  the  growth  of  good 
government  and  the  abatement  of  civic  nuisances?  Or 
by  cessation  of  war?  Or  increase  of  genius?  Or  increase 
in  power  to  work  ?  Or,  finally,  by  expansion  of  sympathy, 
brotherhood,  and  the  power  to  love?  Much  depends 
upon  what  we  include  under  the  term  "  education."  If  we 
limit  it  to  school  instruction  or  home  teaching  it  is  easy 
to  prove  that  such  education  may  be  not  only  non-progres- 
sive, but  even  anti-social  and  anti-progressive.  Much 
of  primitive  formal  instruction  was  rather  of  the  repetitive, 
memoriter,  and  therefore  non-progressive  type  of  educa- 
tion ;  its  chief  aims  were  to  secure  and  develop  keen  per- 
ceptive powers,  physical  endurance,  and  discipline.^  It 
satisfied  chiefly  the  three  primary  interests  of  men.  In 
the  absence  of  most  of  our  prudential  motives  and  lacking 
the  stimulus  of  a  developmental  theory  of  life,  it  tended 

^  Moral  Principles  in  Education,  p.  v. 

^  Sociology  and  Modern  Social  Problems,  2d  ed.  p.  359. 

^  Cf.  my  Primitive  Family  as  an  Educational  Agency,  146,  etc. 


512  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

naturally  to  become  static  and  repressive.  Such  education 
had  the  effect  of  secreting  and  hardening  the  cake  of  custom. 
Social  variations  came  less  from  conscious  teaching  than 
from  exterior  forces  such  as  war,  migration,  exogamy, 
trade,  and  that  whole  process  we  have  learned  to  call  the 
cross-fertilization  of  cultures. 

Any  system  of  formal  instruction  may  be  considered 
from  two  standpoints ;  first,  as  the  mirror  of  the  prevailing 
"interest"  or  the  current  type  of  social  desire  and  activity; 
second,  as  an  active  element  in  the  social  process.  Edu- 
cation reflecting  other  social  activities  is  thus  both  strength 
and  weakness.  If  the  school  uses  methods  and  a  curric- 
ulum quite  out  of  touch  with  current  history  it  works  in 
a  social  and  intellectual  vacuum  and  loses  its  force.  Here 
as  elsewhere  the  educational  genius  must  be  related  to  his 
times  and  get  his  inspiration  from  them.  On  the  other 
hand  education  that  mirrors  decadence,  as  later  Greek 
schools  did,  hastens  the  process  of  destruction.  Greece, 
after  her  period  of  glory,  when  the  privileged  classes  failed 
to  do  their  public  duty,  when  communal  life  decayed, 
when  interest  in  public  Hfe  waned,  and  mercenary  soldiers 
were  called  in,  reflected  this  degradation  in  her  schools. 
Gymnastics  was  generally  dropped  or  emasculated  into 
mere  acrobatics  and  personal  feats  of  strength.  Most 
of  the  Pentathlon  had  lapsed  by  Plutarch's  time.  Rhetoric 
and  music  took  the  place  of  athletics.  Personal  enjoyment 
of  hfe  supplanted  the  old  ideal  of  service  to  the  state. 
These  decadent  forces  are  typified  on  the  one  hand  by 
the  growth  of  large  landed  estates ;  on  the  other  by  rapid 
depopulation.^ 

The  danger  that  education  may  run  in  reflecting  not 
the  best  but  the  worst  or  the  mediocre  in  a  current  civili- 

^  Cf.  Barth,  "Erziehung  und  Gesellschaft,"  in  Rein's  Encyklopadisches 
Handbuch  der  Padagogik,  Bd.  ii. 


EDUCATIONiVL  IMPLICATIONS  OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS     513 

zation  may  be  further  illustrated  by  the  apparent  failure 
of  our  present  school  system  to  counteract  such  phenomena 
of  industrial  anarchy  as  the  Macnamaras.  Instead  of 
withstanding  or  eliminating  them  our  educational  system 
has  fed  them.  By  fostering  an  extreme  individuahsm 
(so  intense  that,  as  Dewey  points  out,  we  have  made  it  a 
crime  for  one  student  to  aid  another  at  school),  by  empha- 
sizing the  principle  of  "get  ahead  at  any  price,"  by  abetting 
the  spirit  of  exploitation  for  profit,  the  schools  have  con- 
tributed to  that  recklessness  of  cost  in  men  or  money  which 
spells  industrial  anarchy.^ 

The  history  of  education  since  the  middle  ages  offers 
an  interesting  example  of  how  it  is  at  the  same  time  a  social 
agency  engaged  in  fixing  a  peculiar  type  of  mind,  and  a 
target  for  other  forces.  Middle  age  teaching  was  essentially 
didactic ;  for  the  whole  of  truth  had  been  revealed  and 
communicated  en  bloc  and  was  in  the  custody  of  God's 
Holy  Church.  Since  no  more  truth  was  discoverable  it  only 
remained  to  learn  literally  the  body  of  truth  and  to  keep 
it  intact.  Hence  the  emphasis  on  memoriter  method,  on 
dogma,  and  the  rigorous  repression  of  free  untrammeled 
inquiry.  If  Aristotle  and  St.  Thomas  had  between  them 
compassed  all  possible  learning,  the  pathway  to  intellectual 
salvation  lay  through  absorption  of  what  these  masters 
had  set  down,  not  through  reaction  upon  their  ideas.  Hence 
the  premium  upon  imitation,  consent,  conformity,  ortho- 
doxy, interpretation,  and  the  discounting  of  originality, 
dissent,  heresy,  or  healthy  skepticism.  The  relativity 
of  human  knowledge  is  lost  sight  of  in  prostration  before 
the  authority  of  supposed  Absolute  Truth.  It  is  easy  to 
see  that  free  discovery  and  innovation  must  have  been 
throttled  in  such  an  educational  system  unless  and  until 
new  economic  and  political  experiences  broke  through  this 

^  See  the  symposium  on  the  Macnamara  case  in  the  Survey,  Dec.  30,  191 1. 
2l 


514  THEORIES   OF    SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

crust  of  traditionalism,  disturbed  the  educational  "set" 
of  the  times,  and  demanded  new  educational  doctrines 
and  methods.  The  heretics  like  Columbus  and  Wyclif 
brought  their  heresy  successfully  to  light  only  because  a 
new  economy  had  forced  breaches  in  the  old  walls  of  reli- 
gious and  secular  conservatism.  The  new  birth  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  was  not  the  flower  of 
scholasticism,  and  could  not  have  happened  until  the  Arab 
migrations  and  conquests  had  forced  European  captains 
of  trade  to  strike  back  through  the  Crusades  and  to  pro- 
voke the  orientalization  of  Byzantium.  The  Indian  trade 
flooded  Italy  with  wealth  and  prepared  the  way  for  the 
retreat  of  Byzantine  scholars  with  their  new-old  learning. 
In  this  way  commerce,  wars  of  trade  and  adventure,  pulled 
Europe  out  of  the  slough  of  sodden  dogmatism,  and  forced 
a  new  taking  account  of  educational  stock. 

The  same  history  of  relative  inelasticity  in  the  school 
might  be  projected  down  to  the  present  day.  Suffice  it 
to  say  that  the  school,  speaking  by  and  large,  has  never 
of  its  own  motion  added  a  single  subject  to  its  curriculum. 
Social  pressure  has  always  forced  it  to  adjust.  Hence 
the  inevitable  paradox :  education  is  constantly  behind 
the  march  of  industrial  progress,  and  yet  necessarily  in 
the  fore  of  any  further  advance.  This  comes  of  its  two- 
fold character  as  the  preserver  and  transmitter  of  past 
knowledge  and  skill,  and  as  the  adapter  of  these  stores  to 
constantly  new  situations. 

Education  then  is  both  static  and  dynamic ;  in  one  age 
conservative,  in  another  radical  and  progressive.  What 
determines  whether  it  is  merely  the  handmaiden  of  a  pre- 
vailing system  of  production  or  religious  thinking,  or 
whether  it  is  the  destroyer  of  superstition  and  special 
privilege?  It  is  largely  a  question,  first,  of  content  and 
method  of  instruction ;    second,  of  incidence,  i.e.  whether 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS     515 

it  is  universal  or  Ihe  privilege  of  certain  classes;   third,  of 
control,  i.e.  by  whom  administered. 

An  archaic  system  of  religion  and  morals  or  an  ancient 
collection  of  primitive  writings  (Bibles  or  "classics")  if 
it  become  the  chief  subject  of  instruction,  and  if  that  in- 
struction be  rote-learning,  cannot  fail  to  land  the  learner 
in  the  bog  of  conservatism.  China,  we  are  told,  is  a  choice 
example  of  systematic  education  as  learning,  of  conservative 
education  gone  to  seed,  producing  a  succession  of  'stand- 
patters,' of  supporters  of  the  old  order,  of  tradition,  of  an 
educated  caste  in  which  religion,  mores,  politics,  and  lit- 
erature were  inextricably  united  in  common  adoration  of 
the  letter.  Indeed  social  leadership  by  such  a  learned 
class  of  scholar-philosophers  may  become  shameful  retreat. 
Babington  attributed  Chinese  stagnation  to  2000  years 
of  scholar-governors.  He  also  rather  pointedly  insists 
that  if  James  I  of  England  had  made  Parliament  a  Witena- 
gemot  of  the  learned  men  of  the  country,  and  had  placed 
the  whole  administration  in  the  hands  of  men  trained  in 
the  classics,  a  stationary  condition  would  have  ensued.^ 
We  know,  too,  that  during  the  nineteenth  century  the 
universities  and  other  higher  educational  institutions, 
the  so-called  educated  and  intellectual  classes,  have  pretty 
uniformly  objected  to  and  opposed  the  march  of  liberalism 
and  democracy.  The  Factory  Acts  were  attacked  almost 
unanimously  by  economists  and  other  public  teachers.^ 
The  intellectuals  have  frequently  laid  themselves  open 
to  the  charge  of  fostering  class  domination.  Professor 
Commons  boldly  told  his  fellow  economists 

"  that  economists   have    had    their   greatest    influence  at 
these   critical   points   of    class  struggle,   when  they  have 

^  Fallacies  of  Race  Theories,  Essay  iii. 

2  Cf.  Kidd,  Social  Evolution,  chap.  vii. ;  Ghent,  Mass  and  Class,  106-9; 
Id.,  Our  Benevolent  Feudalism,  chap.  vii. 


5l6  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

helped  to  shape  the  legislation  of  a  class  just  acquiring 
new  power  (classical  economists  1815-45  in  England,  pro- 
tectionist economists  in  United  States,  1840- 1900)."  ^ 

Education  for  "culture"  is  always  in  danger  of  becoming 
the  tool  of  classes  and  the  badge  of  conservatism,  especially 
if  this  culture  has  received  the  approval  of  past  leisure 
classes.  The  uneducated  frequently  respect  and  honor 
what  they  do  not  understand ;  hence  they  may  join  in 
approving  a  traditionalist  and  static  system  of  education 
which  really  perpetuates  their  own  position  of  disadvantage. 
This  accounts  in  part  at  least  for  the  persistence  of  folk- 
superstitions  and  mores  that  have  outlived  their  primitive 
utility.  Since  much  of  current  education  is  powerless 
before  superstition  and  the  mores  (as  Mr.  Dresslar  and 
Mr.  Chapin  have  shown),  we  may  not  illogically  suspect 
that  part  of  the  difficulty  at  least  may  be  traced  to  sur- 
vivals of  traditionalist  subjects  and  methods  in  our  schools.^ 

Again,  education  that  is  not  universal  may  result  simply 
in  fixing  upon  a  social  group  a  system  of  classes  and  castes 
that  is  positively  retarding  as  well  as  annoying  and  burden- 
some. Professor  Ward  gave  what  is  perhaps  the  most 
eloquent  and  convincing  argument  for  the  spread  of  knowl- 
edge through  education  as  the  paramount  means  for  social 
advance.  But  such  knowledge  must  be  universally  dis- 
tributed. A  society  with  wide  gaps  between  the  intelli- 
gence of  its  several  ranks  may  be  much  worse  off  than  one 
whose  general  level  of  intelligence  is  much  lower  but  in 
which  intelligence  is  general.  "The  distribution  of  knowl- 
edge underlies  all  social  reform."  Why?  Because  the 
existence  of  great  gaps  between  the  ignorant  and  the  more 

*  Publications  of  the  Amer.  Econ.  Assoc,  3d  series,  vol.  i,  p.  64. 

^  Cf .  Dresslar,  Superslition  and  Education,  Univ.  of  California  Publications, 
vol.  V,  No.  I,  1907;  Chapin,  Education  and  the  Mores,  Columbia  Studies  in 
History,  etc.,  vol.  .\liii,  191 1. 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS     517 

intelligent  means  that  the  social  machine  must  be  geared 
to  the  capacity  of  the  less  intelligent :  consequently  a  loss 
of  power.  It  means  also  wastage  of  energy  through  the 
cleavages  between  class  and  class ;  and  this  wastage  is 
compounded  where  —  as  is  the  natural  tendency  —  such 
cleavages  are,  so  to  speak,  institutionalized.  It  means  a 
regime  of  status,  autocracy,  and  exploitation. 

Third,  the  personnel  or  the  authority  that  administers 
education  has  much  to  do  with  its  character  as  static  or 
dynamic.  We  have  already  discussed  this  phase  of  the 
subject  in  the  section  on  government.  It  is  obvious  that 
if  education  be  committed  to  priests  or  ministers  of  religion, 
it  will  be  chiefly  concerned  with  dogma,  tradition,  and  a 
social  system  that  will  support  them.  If  it  be  governed 
by  a  class,  say  the  prosperous  upper  section  of  the  middle 
class,  it  will  reflect  the  mores  of  prosperity ;  if  by  an  aris- 
tocracy, the  prejudices  and  conservatisms  of  the  leisure 
class.  This  of  course  is  what  prompted  Mr.  Galsworthy 
to  charge  English  "Public"  schools  with  being  caste- 
factories  ;  they  are  under  control  of  aristocrats  and  clergy- 
men.^ German  schools  are  presumed  to  turn  out  obedient 
and  militarist  students  because  of  predominance  of  the 
military  caste.  French  schools  are  accused  by  their  critics 
of  being  socialistic,  because  the  central  school  authorities 
to  a  considerable  extent  affiliate  with  the  radical  parties. 
American  schools  are  accused  of  becoming  feminized 
because  of  the  overwhelming  majority  of  women  teachers. 
Private  schools  are  sometimes  condemned  as  not  only 
bad,  but  worse  than  none,  because  they  tend  to  increase 
the  inequality  of  knowledge,  because  of  bad  methods,  and, 
we  might  add,  because  they  tend  to  magnify  certain  inci- 
dentals (military  drill,  sports,  costume,  manners)  somewhat 

^  Edmund  Burke  counted  this  the  glory  of  eighteenth  century  English 
schools ! 


5i8  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

to  the  possible  detriment  of  the  more  generahzed  branches 
of  knowledge.  Again,  practical  or  vocational  education 
may  turn  out  to  be  only  a  thinly  veiled  scheme  to  provide 
manufacturers  with  an  abundant  supply  of  cheap  appren- 
tices for  whose  training  they  no  longer  have  to  pay.  There 
is  evidence  that  the  much  vaunted  German  system  has  not 
benefited  the  worker  himself,  at  least  from  the  standpoint 
of  real  wages. 

Hence  it  is  evident  that  if  we  are  to  find  in  education 
the  means  to  social  improvement  we  must  qualify  the  loose 
general  meaning  of  the  term,  we  must  specify  some  par- 
ticular and  definite  type  of  education.  To  cut  the  matter 
short,  social  education  is  the  means  by  which  change  may 
become  progress,  and  material  achievement  may  be  turned 
into  improvement.  It  alone  can  supply  that  moral  element 
which  is  the  essence  of  real  progress.  It  can  turn  exploita- 
tion into  service,  and  capitalize  achievement  for  the  gen- 
eral weal  instead  of  for  personal  aggrandizement.  Freeing 
of  the  individual  may  be  taken  as  the  index  of  world- 
progress  in  the  past.  Man  has  come  from  status  to  con- 
tract, from  no  rights  to  nominally  full  and  equal  rights. 
It  still  remains  for  him  to  free  himself  from  himself,  so 
that  he  will  voluntarily  bind  himself  to  the  wheel  of  life, 
instead  of  being  bound  by  some  exterior  constraint.  Defi- 
nite, purposive,  social  education  is  the  most  potent  means 
in  our  hands  for  developing  this  spirit  of  self-dedication 
to  the  commonwealth.  Social  education  offers  the  tools 
by  which  an  articulate  social  philosophy  may  express  itself 
in  the  conquest  of  a  rational  future  for  humanity. 


Having  used  the  term  "  social  education  "  so  frequently, 
it  now  becomes  necessary  to  define  it  more  clearly.  This 
precaution  is  the  more  imperative  because  the  phrase  is 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS     519 

rapidly  entering  both  technical  and  popular  parlance.' 
Most  of  the  older  definitions  of  education  were  in  terms  of 
information,  discipline,  individual  culture,  or  harmonious 
rounding  of  personality.  Later  entered  the  biological 
element,  with  notions  of  adaptation  to  environment,  selec- 
tion or  counter-selection.  Sociologists  have  added  the 
element  of  the  mores,  of  the  social  mind,  of  social 
adaptation.^ 

1  Mr.  C.  A.  Scott's  book  Social  Education,  Mr.  Betts'  Social  Principles  of 
Education,  and  Dr.  King's  Social  Aspects  of  Education  are  typical  of  a  new 
crop  of  educational  writings.  A  French  publicist  recently  issued  a  work 
called  L' education  sociale  des  races  noires.  A  Social  Education  Association 
was  formed  in  the  United  States  not  many  years  ago  and  held  a  Social  Educa- 
tion Congress  at  Boston  in  igo6,  which  was  anticipated  by  the  Congres 
international  de  I'education  sociale  at  Paris  in  1900.  Harvard  University 
boasts  a  fellowship  in  social  education.  The  Christian  Science  Monitor, 
Dec.  18,  1913,  printed  a  thoughtful  editorial  on  "Moving  toward  social 
education."  "  Supervisors  of  social  education  "  were  demanded  in  an  article 
in  The  Survey,  July  25,  1914.  The  Christian  Social  Service  Union  of  Pitts- 
burgh announced  a  program  of  lectures  on  Social  Education  for  the  winter 
of  1914-1915. 

2  E.g.  Milton  :  "I  call  therefore  a  complete  and  generous  education,  that 
which  fits  a  man  to  perform  justly,  skilfully  and  magnanimously  all  the 
offices,  both  private  and  public,  of  peace  and  war."  Or  J.  S.  Mill :  Educa- 
tion is  "whatever  helps  to  shape  the  human  being,  to  make  the  individual 
what  he  is,  or  to  hinder  him  from  being  what  he  is  not  .  .  .  the  culture 
which  one  generation  gives  to  the  next  in  order  that  the  culture  already  exist- 
ing may  continue."  Or  Muensterberg  :  "  Education  is  to  make  youth  willing 
and  able  to  realize  the  ideal  purpose."  Or  Basedow  :  "  the  chief  purpose  of 
education  should  be  to  prepare  the  child  for  a  useful,  public-spirited  and 
happy  life." 

Spencer  held  that  "under  its  biological  aspect,  education  may  be  consid- 
ered as  a  process  of  perfecting  the  structure  of  the  organism,  and  making 
it  fit  for  the  business  of  life." 

Professor  Small  writes  that  the  "prime  problem  of  education,  as  the  sociol- 
ogist views  it,  is  how  to  promote  adaptation  of  the  individual  to  the  social 
conditions,  natural  and  artificial,  in  which  the  individuals  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being." 

President  Vincent  takes  the  stand  of  the  social  psychologist :  "  In  general, 
education  may  be  regarded  from  the  social  point  of  view  as  a  reflective  effort 
to  preserve  the  continuity  and  to  secure  the  growth  of  the  common  tradi- 
tion." Similarly,  Guyau  called  it  "nothing  but  a  totality  of  coordinated  and 
reasoned  out  suggestions;"  and  John  Galsworthy  speaks  of  education  as 
"that  machinery  of  infection." 

To  Ruskin  the  entire  object  of  true  education  was  "to  make  people  not 


520  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

In  many  of  these  definitions  the  word  'social'  occurs; 
but  the  term  is  so  grossly  abused  as  to  provoke  the  criticism 
that  it  "covers  a  multitude  of  squints."  At  a  single  ses- 
sion of  the  American  Sociological  Society  I  noted  the 
following  phrases :  social  lines  of  thinking,  social  point 
of  view,  social  perspective,  right  social  directions,  socializ- 
ing social  institutions,  social  church,  social  religion.  A 
"social  economist"  opposes  the  "social  view"  to  the  "old 
view."  A  historian  contrasts  "social  politics"  and  its 
goal  of  social  equality  with  party  pohtics.  Jesus,  by  an- 
other writer,  is  called  the  prophet  of  "socialized  religion" 

—  a  truly  democratic  reforming  agency.  Still  others  speak 
of  "social  salvation."  And  a  whole  brigade  of  writers 
are  occupied  with  "the  social  question"  —  whether  it 
be  ethics  in  general,  or  the  contradiction  between  economic 
and  social  welfare,  or  prostitution,  or  the  elimination  of 
waste,  or  socialism  versus  individualism.  But  by  the 
adjective  social  in  reference  to  education,  I  mean  to  convey 
simply  a  sense  of  mutual  interdependence  and  concern. 
I  am  trying  to  get  away  from  the  archaic  use  of  the  word 
as  "capable  of  being  associated  or  united  to  others,"  and 
to  reach  a  plane  where  it  signifies  an  actual  conscious 
realization  of  voluntary  association  grounded  in  sympathy 
and    friendly   interest;     that   is,    away   from    association 

merely  *  do '  the  right  thing,  but  '  enjoy '  the  right  things :  not  merely  in- 
dustrious, but  to  love  industry  — •  not  merely  learned,  but  to  love  knowledge 

—  not  merely  pure,  but  to  love  purity,  —  not  merely  just,  but  to  hunger 
and  thirst  after  justice." 

Professor  E.  C.  Moore,  inspired  by  John  Dewey,  conceives  education  as  "a 
process  of  organizing  and  remaking  the  experience  and  acts  of  the  individual, 
giving  them  more  socialized  value  through  the  means  of  increased  individual 
efficiency."  Finally  Dr.  Scott  urges  as  the  highest  aim  of  the  school  "the 
capacity  for  effective  social  service  of  a  self-organized  and  voluntary  charac- 
ter;" and  the  real  test  of  school  success  is  "social  capacity  and  productive 
powers";  in  other  words,  that  moral  life  whose  flower  and  fruit  is  "self- 
organized  cooperative  production  for  the  service  and  upbuilding  of  human 
beings." 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS     521 

based  upon  force,  fear,  instinct,  imitation,  or  status,  to 
something  finer  based  upon  sympathy  and  good  will  — 
away  from  a  horrible  sense  of  being  common  victims  of 
the  Black  Hole,  to  a  perception  of  common  citizenship 
and  brotherhood  in  the  City  of  God. 

We  are  now  close  on  the  heels  of  our  elusive  definition. 
Social  education  is  evidently  not  socialism  nor  socialistic 
education.  Nor  is  it  merely  universal  education ;  nor 
state  or  governmental  schools ;  nor  a  combination  of  uni- 
versal and  state  education  as  Ward  thought.  Nor  is  it 
simply  secular.  Neither  is  it  synonymous  with  a  socio- 
logical curriculum,  nor  with  economic  or  industrial  train- 
ing; nor  with  'cultural'  or  'practical'  education  ;  nor  with 
school  subjects  (for  no  one  subject  is  inherently  any  more 
'  social '  than  any  other) ;  nor  for  that  matter  with  any 
sort  of  mere  learning,  as  such.  Nor  is  it  tantamount  to 
ethical  culture,  unless  we  mean  social  morality  or  conduct 
in  its  widest  sense.  Likewise  it  is  not  to  be  confused  with 
ideas  of  equalizing  property  or  standardization  of  desires.^ 
On  the  other  hand,  it  does  involve  recognition  that  the 
individual  is  ineluctably  social ;  that  social  mal-adjustment 
hinders  individual  development ;  that  therefore  social 
education  must  aim  to  prevent  social  waste  and  to  develop 
social  capital  in  men  and  goods.  Moreover,  it  means  that 
its  business  is  to  create  a  favorable  atmosphere  rather  than 
precise  solutions  of  social  problems,  to  create  in  all  of  us 
social  intelligence,  power,  efficiency,  and  interests.  It 
recognizes  the  school  as  a  definite  field  of  social  relation- 
ships, where  social  tools  are  forged  for  future  social  situa- 
tions,  an  institution  which,   however,   scarcely   so  much 

'  I  have  in  mind  here  Aristotle's  scheme  {Politics,  ii,  7)  of  equal  education 
for  the  equalizing  of  desires.  But  is  it  not  rather  the  selection  and  direction 
of  desires  that  we  seek,  their  stimulation  and  guidance  rather  than  Pro- 
crustean measures?  See  Amiel's  protest  (Journal  Inlime,  pp.  34-5)  against 
such  standardizing. 


52  2  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

fits  for  society  as  really  is  society  —  a  cooperative  and 
democratic  society.  In  short,  social  education  means  con- 
scious and  definite  training  through  and  for  certain  specific 
types  of  social  relationship.  Social  education  for  social 
progress,  then,  would  use  as  means  and  end  those  types 
of  social  value  and  relationship  which  appear  most  likely 
to  contribute  to  progress.  Rightly  conceived,  it  is  a  highly 
conscious  instrument  for  selecting  contrihiitive  rather  than 
adaptive  or  dependent  social  types.  Hence  it  must  be  uni- 
versal and  stand  for  generalizing  opportunity,  for  distribut- 
ing the  products  of  human  achievement  in  material  goods 
and  knowledge,  and  for  a  friendly,  voluntary  type  of  as- 
sociation in  place  of  a  coercive,  exploitative  relationship. 
In  a  word,  social  education  aims  to  create  social  solidarity 
by  means  of  a  social  type  marked  by  service  rather  than  ex- 
ploitation. 

That  such  a  social  type  is  theoretically  possible  it  was 
our  purpose  to  demonstrate  in  the  opening  chapters  on 
the  self.  But  that  the  type  has  not  yet  been  achieved 
is  all  too  pathetically  obvious.  Equally  obvious,  also, 
that  our  educational  plant  has  not  been  organized  for 
that  purpose,  and  is  not  functioning  in  that  direction. 
Nothing  is  easier  than  to  mass  the  damaging  evidence 
on  a  score  of  counts.  Space  and  the  spirit  of  charity 
will  permit  only  the  barest  enumeration  of  a  few.  The 
United  States  confesses  still  to  the  shameful  figure  of 
6,000,000  adult  illiterates.  Even  more  painful  is  the  high 
rate  of  ''school  mortality."  The  National  Child  Labor 
Committee  estimates  that  1,000,000  children  of  school 
age  are  out  of  school.  Only  ten  per  cent,  of  the  whole 
school  population  ever  complete  the  high  school ;  only  a 
bare  third  ever  finish  the  elementary  grades ;  half  of  them 
never  reach  the  sixth  grade ;  and  only  one  in  every  two 
hundred   achieve   a  full   college  or  university   course.     I 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS     523 

heard  an  educational  authority  say  recently  that  more 
children  were  out  of  school  and  unaccounted  for  in  a  single 
Middle  West  community  of  a  third  of  a  million  inhabitants 
(who  boast  of  their  city  as  a  second  Boston)  than  in  the 
whole  German  Empire !  This  deplorable  record  is  only 
in  part  the  fault  of  the  school.  It  is  referable  to  a  whole 
complex  social  situation  and  a  material  philosophy  of  life 
as  contemptible  as  it  is  shortsighted.  It  is  the  silliest 
fallacy  to  talk  of  industry  outbidding  the  school  for  the 
child's  interest  as  though  that  were  all  of  it.  The  school 
is  remote  from  life,  it  is  stiff  with  tradition  and  routine, 
it  is  individualistic  as  its  critics  claim ;  but  it  is  also  unable 
to  compete  on  fair  terms  because  hampered  by  scheming 
employers,  greedy  parents,  jealous  churches,  complacent 
police,  recreation  purveyors  and  a  none  too  generous  body 
of  taxpayers.  Teachers,  too,  are  not  as  efficient  as  we 
should  like  to  see  them.  They  fail  in  matters  of  personality, 
training,  discipline,  and  genuine  interest ;  perhaps  most 
of  all  through  their  profound  ignorance  of  the  world  in 
which  they  live.  There  used  to  be  a  good  deal  of  justice 
in  Shaw's  maxim,  "He  who  can  does.  He  who  cannot 
teaches;"  but  with  the  professionalizing  of  education  the 
gibe  loses  more  and  more  of  its  point. 

The  'undigested  immigrant,'  meaning  by  that  the  failure 
to  put  into  motion  the  machinery  for  social  assimilation 
of  the  foreign  born,  is  also  in  part  an  evidence  of  weak  and 
'unsocialized'  education.  No  small  part  of  the  nation's 
illiteracy  and  distress  proceeds  from  this  source.  Our 
wasteful  industrial  system  with  its  reckless  unconcern 
for  either  natural  or  human  resources  is  the  biggest  single 
item  of  reproach  against  American  education.  Losses 
through  destruction  of  timber,  coal,  farm  lands,  birds, 
fish ;  through  unemployment,  underemployment,  prevent- 
able disease  and  accident,  infant  mortaUty,  child  labor, 


524  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

haphazard  vocations,  and  all  the  rest  of  a  depressing  list 
of  items  make  up  a  bill  of  wastage,  ten,  twenty,  fifty  times 
the  cost  of  an  adequate  national  system  of  education. 
The  fundamental  cause  of  this  orgy  of  destruction  (in  the 
name  of  development!),  that  is,  the  rampant  spirit  of 
exploitation  and  the  philosophy  of  getting  on  at  any  price, 
is  a  confession  of  educational  failure.  The  constant 
specter  of  from  a  tenth  to  a  fifth  of  our  whole  population 
in  the  poverty  zone  is  also  a  challenge  to  education  to 
equalize  opportunity  and  develop  efficient  industrial 
training.  Crime,  too,  has  failed  to  diminish  in  terms  of 
one  prison  closed  to  every  school  opened.  Classes  and 
castes  with  class  morals,  class  law,  and  class  wars  are  still 
hatefully  evident.  The  result  of  these  causes  is  another 
mark  of  failure  —  an  undemocratic  democracy.  Democ- 
racy is  hypocrisy  unless  it  is  educated.  We  live  in  a  pseudo- 
democracy  which  is  so  big  and  so  ignorant  that  it  cannot 
govern  itself,  yet  which  is  so  suspicious  of  others  that  it 
denies  full  support  to  representative  government.  We 
are  genuinely  in  danger  of  realizing  Oscar  Wilde's  notion 
of  democracy  as  "simply  the  bludgeoning  of  the  people 
by  the  people  for  the  people."  We  are  certain  to  realize 
it  unless  the  popular  vision  can  be  widened.  Other  evi- 
dences of  educational  mal-adjustment  could  be  added  — 
bearing  notably  on  fragile  domestic  life,  sexual  aberrations, 
the  vogue  of  yellow  journalism,  and  rural  depopulation; 
but  the  picture  is  already  somber  enough. 

One  must  not  be  blind,  however,  to  certain  counter- 
vailing testimonials  to  the  power  of  education  in  con- 
temporary social  life.  There  is  much  talk  of  and  a  good 
deal  of  practicing  the  "Golden  Rule  in  business."  It  is 
no  longer  considered  sentimentality  to  think  of  an  economy 
of  men  rather  than  of  things.  The  tide  for  conservation 
has  unmistakably  set  in.     Courts  incline  more  and  more 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      525 

to  interpret  law  in  favor  of  the  rights  of  persons  as  against 
those  of  property.  The  growing  doctrine  of  the  police 
power  means  ascendancy  of  communal  over  private  prop- 
erty interests.  The  concept  of  'social  justice'  no  less 
than  the  phrase  itself  is  creeping  into  the  field  of  poli- 
tics. President  Wilson's  'new  freedom'  seems  to  aim 
at  precisely  the  same  target  claimed  by  the  Progressive 
party  and  by  some  dreamers  in  the  more  radical  camps 
of  socialism  and  philosophic  anarchism.  Albeit  these 
movements  are  infested  with  sentimental  camp  followers, 
they  are  not  to  be  interpreted  as  mere  spineless  humani- 
tarianism ;  they  should  be  regarded  rather  as  genuine 
evidences  of  sound  social  apprehension.  Furthermore, 
in  the  specific  domain  of  educational  activity,  kindred 
stirrings  are  to  be  found.  I  need  only  mention  the  wider 
use  of  the  school  plant,  extension  courses,  vocational  guid- 
ance, workingmen's  colleges,  playgrounds,  vacation 
schools,  library  centers,  settlements,  clubs,  institutional 
churches,  social  centers,  and  education  for  health  and 
sexual  decency. 

In  order  to  draft  a  Bill  of  Rights  for  social  education 
one  need  only  take  these  hints  and  develop  them.  The 
first  principle  will  cover  training  for  industrial  efficiency. 
I  mean  not  only  craft  technique,  for  an  age  of  machinery 
presupposes  that :  rather,  we  need  a  proper  attitude  of 
mind,  disciplined  intelligence,  a  training  which  will  release 
men  from  bondage  to  their  machines,  which  will  touch  the 
whole  domain  of  industry  with  real  ethical  ideals.  We 
have  already  seen  how  economic  activities  absorb  the  ma- 
jority of  the  population  for  the  larger  part  of  their  time. 
If,  therefore,  they  are  ever  to  be  seized  of  the  community 
spirit  it  must  be  by  investing  industry  with  some  new  code 
of  moral  action.  This  can  only  be  done  by  making  busi- 
ness a  means  instead  of  the  end;    by  making  industrial 


526  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

training  public,  universal,  and  obligatory ;  by  cultivating 
the  critical  mind,  i.e.,  emphasizing  brains  over  strength; 
by  dramatizing  daily  work.  Such  a  radical  reconstruction 
of  attitude  can  only  come  through  reorganizing  industry 
upon  a  basis  of  service  instead  of  profit  and  by  commanding 
the  cooperative  intelligence  of  the  workers  through  some 
plan  of  wider  copartnership.  It  may  involve  a  develop- 
ment of  public  ownership,  state  socialism,  nationalization 
of  land  and  cooperative  industry.  But  the  name  signifies 
little.  The  essential  is  to  evoke  full  productive  capacities 
and  full  participation  in  the  product.  Mere  vocational 
steering,  vocational  courses,  welfare  work,  continuation 
schools,  or  corporation  schools,  will  accomplish  little  of 
permanent  value.  We  must  first  come  to  regard  produc- 
tion as  a  creative  art  instead  of  a  mere  profitable  exploita- 
tion whose  final  outcome  is  increased  social  stratification 
and  grossly  disproportioned  rewards.  Vocational  educa- 
tion will  serve  social  education  truly  when  it  is  designed 
not  to  adapt  the  worker  to  some  present  social  system, 
but  through  him  to  transform  it.  The  business  of  the 
school  is  here  quite  apparent :  to  uncover  vocational 
aptitudes,  to  confer  industrial  skill,  to  evoke  a  dynamic 
intelligence,  to  breed  'divine  discontent,'  to  sow  seeds  of 
cooperation  and  to  breathe  the  spirit  of  creative  art  into 
industry.^ 

*  For  details  on  these  points  compare :  Carlton,  History  and  Problems  of 
Organized  Labor,  462;  Commons,  Labor  and  Administration,  pp.  375  ff. ; 
Dean,  The  Worker  and  the  State,  6,  13,  122  ff.,  199  ff. ;  Dewey,  J.,  New  Repub- 
lic, May  15,  1915,  p.  42  ;  Durkheim,  De  la  division  da  travail,  2d  ed.,  preface; 
Dutton  and  Snedden,  Administration  of  Education,  419  ff. ;  Hearn,  Pliitology, 
chap,  iii,  iv  ;  Henderson,  C.  H.,  Pay  Day,  chap,  xiii-xvii ;  Hobson,  Problems 
of  Poverty,  180,  etc.;  King,  Social  Aspects  of  Education,  chap,  vi,  ix,  x; 
Lippmann,  A  Preface  to  Politics,  57,  etc.;  Morison,  The  New  Epoch,  1-90; 
Morris,  W.,  Useful  Work  vs.  Useless  Toil;  Rogers,  Industrial  and  Commercial 
History  of  England,  24-5  ;  Ruskin,  Political  Economy  of  Art  and  Pre-Raphael- 
itism;  Sadler,  Continuation  Schools,  chap,  ix;  Toynbee,  The  Industrial  Revo- 
lution (Address  on  The  Education  of  Cooperators). 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      527 

To  accomplish  these  ends  will  require  profound  modi- 
fications of  current  educational  equipment  and  method ; 
but  chiefly  along  the  lines  of  making  vital  contacts  between 
school  and  industry,  of  real  civic  teaching,  and  of  oppor- 
tunities for  perennial  reeducation.  These  problems  in- 
volve continuation  schools  for  both  youths  and  adults, 
university  extension,  such  cooperative  organizations  be- 
tween universities  and  workers  as  the  French  universites 
popidaires,  workingmen's  colleges,  public  lecture  systems 
as  in  New  York  and  Chicago,  polytechnics,  and  public 
urban  universities.  Most  of  these  have  to  do  with  city 
life.  But  no  less  important  is  the  problem  of  rural  social 
education  and  reeducation.  Hence  the  demand  for  in- 
troducing and  adapting  the  Scandinavian  Folks  Hoysckoler 
or  People's  High  Schools,  designed  to  combine  liberal, 
vocational  and  civic  reeducation  for  adults.  So  far  we 
have  reached  only  the  elementary  stage  of  response  to  this 
demand ;  for  example,  in  the  Moonlight  Schools  of  rural 
Kentucky,  and  in  Agricultural  High  Schools. 

To  these  forms  of  education  must  be  added  some  five 
hundred  Social  Settlements  now  at  work.  They  have  done 
a  notable  job  of  pioneering  in  educational  experiment, 
particularly  along  lines  of  manual  art,  recreation,  and  civic 
intelligence.  Side  by  side  with  them  are  to  be  reckoned 
the  institutional  churches  and  boys'  clubs.  And  frequently 
growing  out  of  them,  the  various  forms  of  vacation  schools, 
vacant  lot  gardening,  manual  training  centers,  little  thea- 
ters, traveling  museums,  and,  above  all,  playgrounds.  One 
of  the  most  hopeful  aspects  of  recent  educational  develop- 
ment is  the  rapid  extension  of  organized  recreation.  Every 
important  city  in  America  is  striving  to  equip  itself  with 
playgrounds.  The  tendency  is  sound ;  for  it  is  no  futile 
paradox  to  hold  that  the  best  introduction  to  sound  work  is 
sane  play.     If  we  want  cooperation  and  the  creative  art 


528  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

impulse  in  industry  there  is  no  surer  way  of  getting  them 
started  than  through  organized  team  play.  If  we  want 
to  teach  conservation  and  self-government,  again  there  is 
no  better  road  than  through  the  directed  playground 
and  its  adjunct,  the  school  garden. 

The  forces  of  recreation  and  education  can  be  focused 
through  such  institutions  as  public  social  centers,  to  include 
healthful  forms  of  dancing,  outdoor  play,  baths,  public 
lectures,  the  drama  (primarily  amateur),  educational 
moving  pictures,  art  and  nature  collections,  and  the  housing 
of  neighborhood  organizations  like  Boy  Scouts,  Women's 
Clubs,  civic  and  commercial  bodies.  Such  a  plan  is  work- 
able alike  for  country  or  city. 

The  library,  too,  has  heard  a  new  educational  call  and 
tends  to  become  more  than  a  safe  deposit  for  books.  Its 
ideal  now  is  to  send  out  its  treasures  into  the  schools  and 
thence  into  the  remotest  neighborhoods.  It  feels  the 
pulse  of  public  affairs,  and  advertises.  It  seeks  to  antici- 
pate private  needs  and  to  clear  the  weeds  from  channels 
of  public  opinion.^  Hence,  reading  and  study  classes  for 
school  children  and  classes  for  the  foreign  born  are  formed, 
lecture  courses  and  debates  added,  art  collections  installed. 
Some  libraries  have  become  full-fledged  social  centers,  with 
swimming  pools,  gymnasiums,  and  dancing  rooms. 

Education  tends  also  to  function  along  the  lines  of  health 
and  moral  education.  I  do  not  mean  that  medical  inspec- 
tion of  children  has  justified  its  claims  or  that  it  is  an  end 
in  itself.  Its  chief  service  has  been  to  awaken  the  public 
to  the  meaning  of  community  ill-health  and  the  need  of 
health  conservation  through  cooperative  effort.  This 
health  thought  expresses  itself  in  the  care  for  mental  and 

^  For  example :  the  mother  of  every  new  born  baby  in  Minneapolis 
receives  at  once  a  post  card  from  the  Public  Library,  containing  a  list  of  books 
on  child  care.  Reference  libraries  are  located  frequently  in  business  dis- 
tricts ;  reading  lists  follow  closely  every  stirring  public  event. 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      529 

physical  misfits  —  the  truant,  incorrigible,  unstable,  and 
inapt  —  as  well  as   the  downright   defectives.     The   new 
education  will  widen  it  to  include  prevention  of  disease 
through  decent  incomes,  proper  housing,  sanitation,  pure 
air,  the  elimination  of  needless  smoke  and  noise,  sex  pro- 
phylaxis, and  the  reduction  of  fear.     Such  a  program  means 
both  health  and  civic  morality.     By  moral  education  I 
mean  not  so  much  teaching  abstract  ethics  for  so  many 
minutes  per  week  (the  state  law  of  Illinois  requires  half 
an  hour  a  week)   as  investing  and   suffusing  the  whole 
educational   curriculum  with  a   sense   of   its  effect  upon 
conduct.     That  means,  in  short,  stimulating  the  imagina- 
tion and  helping  it  to  function  in  social  terms.     For  ex-- 
ample :  geography  can  be  made  to  bring  out  facts  of  social 
interdependence,  and,  by  adding  a  dash  of   ethnography, 
to    teach    race    tolerance.     History    can    be   vastly    more 
humanized.     As  Seguin  pointed  out  in  his  famous  Report 
on  Education,  if  history  is  to  be  written  about  great  per- 
sonalities, they  can  be  portrayed  not  only  as  kings  and 
bloody  warriors,  but  also  as  patrons  of  science  and  the 
arts.^     Moreover,    such   moral    training,    while    distinctly 
not  anti-religious,  will  in  no  wise  base  itself  upon  religious 
dogma  for  its  sanctions.     Some  provision  in  school  organi- 
zation may  hereafter  be  made  for  recognizing  religious 
teaching  in  the  child's  daily  program,  but  not  as  part  of 
the   regular  prescribed   educational  work.     Social   educa- 
tion does  not  mean  Christian  education  or  Jewish  educa- 
tion,   or   CathoHc,    or   Baptist,    or   Bahai   education.     It 
means  tolerance  for  all  these  and  more,  so  long  as  they 
may    serve    the    common    purpose    of    improvement.     It 
does  not  mean  exiling  God  from  the  world ;    it  holds  no 
right  of  eminent  domain  over  religious  beliefs  or  opinion ; 

^  Alexander,  for  instance,  scoured  the  East  for  specimens  in  botany  and 
zoology  for  Aristotle. 
2m      ' 


530  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  most,  and  at  the  same  time  the  very  least,  it  can  claim 
is  the  sacred  duty  of  cultivating  in  every  child  the  abihty 
to  test  and  revise  his  own  convictions. 

But  does  not  moral  education  include  provision  for 
discipline?  Surely,  but  preferably  through  promoting 
self -discipline,  self-control  and  independent  judgment. 
Notwithstanding  Rousseau  on  the  one  hand  and  Le  Play 
on  the  other,  children  are  neither  born  angels  to  be  cor- 
rupted by  society  nor  wholly  savages  to  be  reduced  to  order 
by  parental  authority.  They  are  both ;  and  the  school, 
like  the  statesman,  must  steer  between  the  extremes  of 
brute  force  and  foolish  non-resistance.  Order  there  must 
be  if  real  freedom  is  to  flourish;  if  "soft  pedagogy"  will 
not  secure  it,  then  some  more  virile  methods  must  be 
invoked.  Organized  schemes  for  self-government  may 
be  used  ^  so  long  as  they  really  teach  children  to  control 
themselves  instead  of  "bossing"  others.  Likewise,  the 
'honor  system'  may  contribute  to  this  end.  The  success 
of  such  devices  depends  more,  however,  upon  the  char- 
acter of  teacher  and  public  than  upon  the  students  them- 
selves. The  safest  general  principle  to  guide  in  the  thorny 
path  of  school  discipline  for  normal  youth  is  Spinoza's 
maxim  that  "minds  are  not  conquered  by  arms,  but  by 
love  and  magnanimity."  Magnanimity  is  the  key  to 
discipline  if  it  can  be  constantly  expressed  as  the  will  to 
lead  growing  minds  to  think  and  feel  largely,  persistently, 
daringly.  Edmund  Burke's  bete  noir,  Richard  Price, 
somewhat  scandaHzed  his  generation  by  cleaving  to  this 
view  of  educational  discipline.  "Education,"  he  said, 
"ought  to  be  an  initiation  into  candor,  rather  than  into 

^  Such  as  those  worked  out  by  Mr.  B.  Cronson,  Mr.  W.  L.  Gill,  Mr.  J.  T. 
Ray,  Miss  Brownlee,  Mr.  W.  R.  George,  Mr.  J.  M.  Brewer,  and  others. 
They  appear  under  such  various  names  as:  The  School  Republic,  The 
Junior  Republic,  The  School  City.  Their  success  has  led  to  a  demand  for 
introducing  similar  methods  into  penal  institutions. 


EDUCATIONAL   IMPLICATIONS   OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS     531 

any  system  of  faith ;  it  should  form  a  habit  of  cool  and 
patient  investigation,  rather  than  an  attachment  to  any 
opinion."  Such  candor  or  wholeness  of  thinking  will  of 
itself  provide  the  antidote  to  any  reckless  action  or  social 
dissolution.  We  must  expect  the  explosion  of  passion  and 
the  drift  of  instinct  so  long  as  school  or  parental  discipline 
clouds  the  issues  of  life  by  taboos  and  dogma.  Typical, 
indeed,  is  the  hfe  of  Ernest  Pontifex  (in  Butler's,  The  Way 
of  all  Flesh)  of  whom  the  author  says,  "By  far  the  greater 
part  ...  of  his  education  had  been  an  attempt,  not  so  much 
to  keep  him  in  blinkers,  as  to  gouge  his  eyes  out  altogether." 
Those  forms  of  vapid  social  unrest  which  profit  nothing 
never  come  from  wide-open  eyes  habituated  to  light.  In- 
variably they  are  the  angry  protest  of  eyes  suddenly  un- 
bandaged  or  unblinkered  through  bitter  experience  of 
reality.  Kaspar  Hauser's  tribe  make  excellent  institu- 
tional inmates,  but  poor  citizens  of  a  progressive  com- 
munity. A  youth  fed  on  dogma  may  become  the  most 
implacable  anti-cleric.  And  the  social  group  suddenly 
released  from  intense  repression  may  react  to  the  wildest 
anarchy. 

Social  education  for  industry  and  public  affairs  must 
be  supplemented  by  training  for  domestic  life  if  the  family 
is  to  function  constructively.  First,  in  the  arts  of  wife- 
hood and  husbandhood :  such  fine  arts  as  the  joint  bank 
account,  the  recognition  of  rights  to  full  personality,  the 
wholesome  sex  life.  These  involve  training  in  sex  hygiene 
and  home  making  for  both  men  and  women.  The  kinder- 
garten or  Kitchen  Garden  or  Montessori  school  room  may 
be  the  point  of  departure.  Second,  the  arts  of  motherhood 
and  fatherhood,  including  the  care  of  children  and  the 
control  of  sexual  appetite  (call  it  eugenics  or  birth  control, 
as  you  please).     So  long  as  knowledge  of  the  duties  of 


532  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

motherhood  fails  to  come  simply  by  nature,  it  must  be  com- 
municated both  by  schools  and  other  quasi-educational 
agencies.^  Potential  fathers  need  training  also  for  parent- 
hood, and  this  training  must  include  some  concept  of  in- 
dustrial reorganization  which  will  so  shorten  the  industrial 
work  day  that  time  will  be  left  for  rational  fatherhood. 
Third,  the  art  of  harmonious  cooperation  between  home 
and  school.  This  involves  much  already  undertaken 
by  so-called  Parent  and  Teachers'  Associations,  Parent 
Leagues  or  Home  and  School  Associations ;  by  Mothers' 
Clubs;  and,  as  in  Council  Bluffs,  by  Fathers'  Clubs. 
Contacts  are  formed  in  some  communities  by  visiting  school 
teachers,  home  gardening  teachers,  visiting  housekeepers, 
and  school  nurses,  in  addition  to  the  ruder,  more  official 
visits  of  attendance  and  probation  officers.  Converting 
schools  into  social  centers  and  making  them  the  axes  of 
neighborhood  life  seem  to  promise  the  most  natural  method 
of  developing  a  zone  of  healthy  contacts.  A  very  genuine 
sort  of  cooperation  might  be  developed  through  parental 
criticism  of  the  schools,  were  that  criticism  genuine,  well- 
informed,  constructive  public  opinion,  and  not  ill-tempered 
resentment,  prejudice,  or  petty  revenge.  In  time  Howard's 
vision  of  Colleges  of  Domestic  Relations  alongside  of  Law 
and  Medicine  may  be  realized.  But  if  instruction  for 
progressive  home  keeping  is  to  reach  the  great  ninety-nine 
per  cent,  of  our  home  makers  it  should  not  be  postponed 
till  the  college  course ;  it  must  begin  with  the  child's  first 
entrance  into  the  educational  world.  And  as  an  increasing 
density  of  population  forces  us  into  more  momentous  con- 
tacts with  our  fellows,  domestic  education  that  is  truly 
social  will  include  deliberate  training  in  thoughtfulness, 
consideration,     cooperation     in     consumption,     cleaning, 

^  E.g.,  The  Federal    Children's  Bureau,  The  National  Association  for 
Prevention  of  Infant  Mortality,  Mothers'  Clubs. 


EDUCATIONAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS     533 

cooking,    and    the   ability    to   put   oneself   in   the  other's 
place. ^ 

I  cannot  prolong  this  account  of  social  education :  it 
has  been  done  in  detail  and  in  authoritative  manner  by 
Professor  John  Dewey,  Alexander  Morgan,  and  others. 
The  machinery  for  working  out  these  hints  is  the  concern 
of  schoolmen.  My  problem  ends  with  convincing  them 
that  social  progress  demands  capacity  to  produce  and 
willingness  to  think  communitywise,  and  that  education 
can  aid  in  meeting  the  demand.  If  we  believe  theoretically 
with  Felix  Adler  that  a  new  moral  and  spiritual  feudahsm, 
the  rightful  vicarious  spirit  of  feudalism  purged  of  its  false 
reverence  for  the  few,  can  create  social  solidarity,  we  must 
also  be  prepared  to  place  our  faith  in  homely  practical 
pedagogic  devices  for  this  training  in  service.  Brother 
Barnabas  infused  the  raw  boys  in  his  Lincolndale  Farm 
with  the  social  spirit  by  simply  showing  them  that  if  they 
turned  out  clean  certified  milk  they  were  cooperating 
to  save  infants  in  congested  cities.  This  is  the  real  meaning 
of  leadership,  namely,  repaying  "the  unearned  increment 
of  social  advantage."  And  it  can  be  taught  in  schools 
just  as  it  can  be  disseminated  through  Cavendish  Associa- 
tions or  Agenda  Clubs  or  samurai.  But  since  it  takes 
leaders  to  train  leaders,  schools  must  be  able  to  attract 
first-rate  men  and  women.  To  do  this  schools  must  be- 
come, if  they  are  not  already,  social  groups  where  the  open, 
liberal,  critical  mind  can  flourish  and  breed  its  own  kind. 
Moreover,  they  must  offer  certain  appropriate  prizes  for 
specialized  ability.  Educational  work  has  too  long  suffered 
from  the  medieval  concept  of  education  as  charity  and  of 
teachers  as  celibate  clerics  living  off  doles  from  the  benevo- 

'  Any  one  who  has  ever  lived  in  an  apartment  house  will  agree  that  train- 
ing is  essential  in  such  elementary  habits  as  walking  lightly,  playing  the 
piano  at  reasonable  hours,  speaking  gently,  cooperating  in  the  use  of  the 
laundry,  etc. 


534  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

lent.  Current  business  philosophy  with  its  ideas  of  profit 
and  of  labor  as  a  commodity  (summarized  in  one  of  E. 
H.  Harriman's  favorite  maxims,  "Never  pay  a  man  all 
he  is  worth.  If  you  do,  there  is  no  profit  in  him"),  has 
also  conspired  to  depress  the  economic  position  of  the 
teacher.  Perhaps  business  men  and  clerics  and  taxpayers 
have  been  right.  Why  waste  good  productive  capital 
on  a  man  who  produces  nothing  of  tangible  value?  So 
long  as  conformity  to  the  mores  is  the  prime  demand,  very 
little  teaching,  and  that  quite  uninspired,  is  needed.  Fourth- 
rate  men  are  good  enough  to  pass  on  superstition,  tradition, 
and  colorless  orthodoxy.  But  let  education  become  dy- 
namic, let  it  thrill  with  a  vision  of  becoming  the  chariot 
horses  and  the  chariot  in  which  society  shall  urge  itself 
forward  to  a  better  day,  and  men  and  women  of  first  rank 
will  arise  and  consecrate  themselves  to  making  the  vision 
full  reality.  Without  that  vision  "educational  measure- 
ments," movements  to  increase  "school  efficiency,"  re- 
forms of  curricula,  "child  study,"  and  all  the  rest  of  it  are 
but  the  clattering  of  machinery  grinding  chaff ;  with  it 
they  become  the  tools  for  generating  the  self-criticism  and 
creative  energies  essential  to  the  process  of  producing  an 
environment  in  which  Social  Man  can  flourish  and  rise 
higher  and  higher  above  Man  the  Clod. 


>^ 


CHAPTER   XXXIV 
SUMMARY   AND    CONCLUSIONS 

The  long  survey  ended,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  gather 
up  the  conclusions  formulated  along  the  way  and  to  sum- 
marize and  unify  them.  First,  we  learned  to  distinguish 
progress  from  mere  social  change  or  evolution,  on  the  ground 
that  progress  means  social  change  for  the  better,  social 
amelioration  accorHi^p-  fn  c;nmp  fairly  ripfinffp  stnnd?rd  '^f 
human  values.  We  recognized  man  as  distinctively  the 
progressive  animal,  that  is,  potentially  progressive  ;  almost 
infinitely  adaptive,  and  with  a  nature  slowly  but  indefinitely 
modifiable.  We  concluded  that  modern  man  has  risen 
above  the  primitive  in  social  integration,  in  the  content 
and  sweeping  expression  of  his  intelligence,  and  in  the  insur- 
ance aspects  of  life.  This  progress  represents  in  the  main  a 
change  from  passive  to  active  adaptation,  from  fitting  into, 
to  utilization  and  control  of,  his  natural  environment. 
Control  tends  to  pass  more  and  more  from  geography  to 
intelligence.  Mental  progress  has  consisted  rather  in 
mind-content  than  in  inherent  capacity,  rather  in  sharpness 
and  breadth  of  intellectual  perceptions  and  a  keener  sense 
of  moral  relations  than  in  sharpness  of  sensory  powers. 
It  seems  correct  to  say  also  that  man  has  progressed  morally, 
in  the  sense  that  moral  standards  have  been  refined  and 
extended,  while  moral  values  have  risen  and  grown  more 
sensitive. 

Is  progress,  then,  natural  and  necessary?  Is  it  true  that 
the  opposite  is  unthinkable,  or  that  man  and  the  world, 

535 


536  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

by  definition,  have  an  inherent  tendency  toward  better- 
ment ?  Perhaps  they  have  ;  perhaps  there  is  even  a  Prime 
Mover  who  communicates  the  eternal  impulse  to  improve. 
But  we  have  no  tangible  evidence  of  him  in  this  capacity. 
Such  a  Power  may  be  assumed  pragmatically^  but  at  present 
is  beyond  the  scientific  ken.  On  the  other  hand  there  is 
plenty  of  evidence  that  the  opposite  of  progress  is  quite 
thinkable :  philosophical  pessimism  denies  it  utterly,  and 
many  religions  conceive  humanity  as  dead  in  its  trans- 
gressions ;  while  from  the  historical  angle  the  principle 
of  retrogression  or  decadence  is  to  be  seen  very  active  if  not 
triumphant.  We  are  forced  to  conclude  that  while  evolu- 
tion is  universal,  progress  is  rare.  Mankind,  whatever  level 
it  has  reached,  is  always  faced  with  the  possibility  of  de- 
generation. No  people  is  immune.  There  have  been 
more  failures  than  successes  in  the  historic  past,  more 
savages  than  civilized  peoples. 

Progress,  when  it  occurs,  is  not  in  a  straight  line,  nor  at 
a  uniform  rate,  but  is  shifting  and  uneven,  up  and  down, 
from  one  side  to  another,  at  varying  speeds,  but  sometimes 
with  cumulative  momentum.  In  military  parlance  it 
resembles  the  nibbling,  attrition  methods  of  modern  trench 
warfare  rather  than  the  more  spectacular  big  drive. 

Progress  has  not  been  on  the  whole  conscious  or  definitely 
aimed  at,  since  conscious  rational  fife  is  only  a  fragment  of 
mental  life,  and  since  social  processes  are  so  complex  as  to 
have  defied  any  attempt  at  scientific  formulation  until 
recently.  Probably  whatever  progress  mankind  has  won 
is  the  result  of  a  more  or  less  instinctive  struggle  against 
losing  any  advantages  by  whatever  means  already  won 
(individual  or  group  conscience),  and  of  an  equally 
instinctive  dissatisfaction  with  the  old  and  reaching 
out  for  the  new  (ennui,  curiosity),  by  the  method  of 
trial  and  error. 


SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSIONS  537 

Social  evolution  and  progress  result  from  the  interplay  of 
various  factors  or  conditioning  influences,  which,  albeit 
they  cannot  be  isolated  legitimately  from  the  total  organic 
complex  of  which  each  is  a  part,  may  for  purposes  of  expo- 
sition be  distributed  under  such  headings  as  natural  environ- 
ment, improvement  in  the  arts,  racial  character,  or  develop- 
ment of  mental  outfit,  but  which  all  reduce  finally  to  one 
common  denominator,  mind,  in  which  the  elements  of  desire 
and  rational  choice  become  gradually  more  distinctive  and 
powerful.  Hence  progress  is  the  result  of  a  constant  con- 
flict of  man  with  himself,  with  his  natural  environment, 
and  with  his  social  milieu  (including  unseen  powers) ;  in 
other  words,  is  a  constant  balancing  up  of  interests  and 
desires.  There  is,  moreover,  apparently  a  tendency, 
general  though  painfully  slow,  from  a  predominant  interest 
in  the  arts  of  self-maintenance  through  those  of  physical 
conflict  and  coercive  association  to  the  higher  arts  of  in- 
tellectual culture  and  gratification,  and  finally  to  a  more 
spontaneous  type  of  association.  That  is  to  say,  progress 
is  marked  by  a  shifting  and  raising  of  the  incidence  of 
values  and  by  transition  from  a  social  organization  wherein 
status  and  custom  predominate  to  one  characterized  more 
by  free  contract  and  individual  judgment.  Or,  if  we  follow 
Hegel,  progress  is  growth  in  freedom.  In  current  ter- 
minology this  growth  in  freedom  is  a  change  in  which  passive 
adaptation  to  nature  and  instinctive  subordination  of 
individual  to  group  becomes  active  control  over  nature  and 
emergence  of  the  individual,  with  his  voluntary  identifica- 
tion of  himself  and  his  social  group  as  a  possible  next  step. 

Examination  of  concrete  tests  for  progress  uncovered 
the  fact  that  mere  size  of  a  social  group  is  no  determinant. 
Not  big  populations  but  sound,  efficient,  integrated  popula- 
tions are  potentially  progressive.  By  integration  we  do  not 
mean  uniformity  or  dead-levelism :   the  need  is  rather  for 


538  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

the  greatest  possible  variety.  Hence  sound  social  policy 
will  foster  favorable  social  variations  (including  a  goodly 
dash  of  heretics)  rather  than  stereotyped  uniformity,  and 
distributed  rather  than  concentrated  authority. 

In  the  economic  sphere  we  found  that  inventions  or  tools 
contribute  to  progress  when  and  if  they  are  accompanied 
by  such  corresponding  gains  in  intellectual  and  moral 
Vision  that  their  service  overtops  their  costs  in  noxious 
by-products.  L,ikewise^  specialization  in  occupations  is 
positive  gain  so  long  as  it  does  not  degenerate  into  social 


[fatmcation  or  self-centered  and  exploiting  interest- 
groups  or  guilds.  It  can  be  dehnitely  counted  upon  only 
when  general  intelligence  and  moral  perception  devote  that 
specialized  craft  ability  to  the  social  weal.  Again,  progress 
comes  not  by  mere  increase  in  wealth  but  through  wealth 
distributed  in  such  a  way  as  to  offer  opportunity  to  all,  to 
evoke  creative  energies,  and  to  permit  of  social  contributions 
from  all.  It  is  a  question  of  enlarged  opportunity  for  the 
average  man  and  his  fitness  to  seize  and  utilize  it.  Wealth- 
getting  when  conceived  as  end  rather  than  means  leads  to 
class-strife,  war,  and  destruction  of  wealth  itself  instead 
of  peaceful  advance.  Industrial  expansion  is  progress  only 
when  other  outlets  for  creative  energy  and  expression  can 
compete  with  it  on  equal  terms.  The  ownership  of  prop- 
erty has  such  important  disciplinary  and  cultural  aspects 
that  but  Httle  advance  can  be  hoped  for  until  a  reconstruc- 
tion of  property  systems  (through  socialization  of  land  and 
other  natural  resources,  inheritance  restrictions,  increasing 
individual  productivity,  or  some  other  method  of  assuring 
the  normal  individual  a  decent  income  and  of  distributing 
products  more  nearly  according  to  productive  capacity), 
will  evoke  and  develop  the  qualities  of  prudence,  foresight, 
self-control,  and  a  sense  of  economic  responsibility ;  in 
other  words,  will  release  the  springs  of  energy  and  productive 


SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSIONS  539 

effort,  and  reward  equitably  every  real  contribution  to 
social  well-being. 

Much  biological  teaching  on  social  progress  we  discovered 
to  be  only  dogma  complicated  by  mysticism  and  often  ob- 
viously inspired  by  obscurantism.  It  became  evident  that 
some  .process  of  social  selection,  conscious  tehc  selection, 
must  replace  the  old  irrational,  wasteful,  "natural"  pro- 
cess of  conserving  the  socially  fittest  and  eliminating  the 
parasitic  or  degenerate.  This  is  the  function  of  positive 
eugenics,  rightly  considered ;  which  means  that  its  funda- 
mental task  is  to  reclaim  and  utilize  latent  human  abilities 
by  creating  social  opportunity  in  the  forms  of  income, 
leisure,  discipline,  and  education.  Incidentally  we  were 
unable  to  discover  any  proof  of  a  general  or  constant 
tendency  toward  racial  degeneration.  On  the  whole  the 
general  level  of  biological  fitness  was  attained  ages  ago  and 
has  been  maintained,  yet  cannot  be  guaranteed  for  the 
future.  Hence,  while  inter-race  conflicts  may  continue 
indefinitely,  there  is  no  present  proof  that  they  will  ulti- 
mate in  higher  racial  health  or  in  selecting  the  fittest  in 
any  final  progressive  sense.  On  the  contrary,  if  race-con- 
flict be  written  into  the  eternal  order  of  things,  there  is 
scant  hope  for  huma.n  advance.  If  it  is  but  a  transitional 
phase  of  evolution  whose  purpose  is  finally  to  eliminate  war- 
like race  types  just  as  social  selection  has  weeded  out  the 
more  violent  types  within  social  groups,  there  is  less  ground 
for  pessimism. 

War,  likewise,  is  an  unproductive  form  of  human  activity. 
It  may  have  cooperated  with  other  agencies  to  weld  to- 
gether social  groups,  but  always  at  great  cost.  Biologically 
it  has  worked  both  selectively  and  counter-selectively. 
While  it  may  have  served  to  maintain  a  given  level  of  cul- 
ture —  and  this  is  by  no  means  an  unqualified  fact  —  it  is 
usually  a  waster  of  culture  (in  capital,  energy,  men),  which 


540  THEORIES   OF  SOCE\L   PROGRESS 

must  be  turned  into  productive  channels  if  the  world  is 
to  go  forward.  Industry  builds  up,  militarism  depletes. 
War-begotten  virtues  are  mainly  incidental  by-products. 
Hence,  while  a  conditioning  circumstance  in  social  evolu- 
tion, war  is  only  in  a  remote  sense  an  agency  for  progress. 
The  dispositions  of  pugnacity  and  competition  will,  so  far 
as  we  can  see,  continue  indefinitely  as  part  of  the  human 
endowment ;  but  there  is  no  good  reason  why  they  should 
not  be  canalized  for  constructive  ends.  The  heroic  impulse 
will  not  perish  if  suppUed  with  appropriate  moral  and 
physical  equivalents  for  armed  combat.  Here  is  an 
opportunity  for  a  new  educational  technique.  And  not  the 
least  challenging  of  its  problems  will  be  to  eliminate  poverty 
and  to  work  out  a  rational  method  of  peaceful  inter-racial 
contact. 

In  our  brief  review  of  the  family  institution  we  concluded 
that  it  might  be  expected  to  yield  larger  contributions  to 
social  well-being  if  men  and  women  were  definitely  trained 
■for  both  marital  and  parental  duties.  The  family  and  sex 
life  in  general  offer  notorious  examples  of  blind  drift.  If 
concepts  of  race-health  and  controlled  reproduction  can 
displace  laissez  faire  and  mere  explosion  of  instinct,  and  if 
economic  organization  can  be  so  adjusted  as  to  allow  ade- 
quate time  and  income  for  healthy  domesticity,  then  home 
life  may  take  on  enhanced  values.  It  may  contribute  to 
new  moral  idealisms  and  esthetics,  while  still  functioning 
economically  and  physiologically  to  raise  the  level  of  average 
hereditary  ability. 

The  institution  of  government,  depreciated  as  it  com- 
monly is,  may  yet  grow  progressively  as  a  welfare  agency ; 
particularly  in  its  administrative  capacity  as  the  remover  of 
social  hindrances  and  as  the  restraining  hand  upon  destruc- 
tive competition  when  it  threatens  to  degenerate  into  brute 
struggle  for  existence.     But  this  function  of  social  justice 


SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSIONS  541 

will  develop  only  as  political  capacity  is  attained  by  the 
whole  people.  If  education  without  political  responsibility 
is  a  menace  to  the  peace  and  life  of  society  (as,  for  example, 
it  was  argued  in  the  middle  ages  against  schooling  the  Third 
Estate,  or  in  the  Southern  United  States  against  educating 
negroes),  how  much  more  menacing  is  political  responsibility 
without  the  capacity  which  genuine  education  can  confer 
in  part  at  least? 

Law  may  be  counted  as  a  silent  partner  among  the  pro- 
gressive agencies  from  its  character  as  a  map  or  code  of 
social  obligations ;  particularly  if  lawyers  and  courts  can 
be  taught  to  revise  the  map  more  easily ;  that  is,  if  law 
can  be  related  more  closely  to  concrete  social  life,  and  inter- 
preted less  in  terms  of  formal  precedent  and  more  in  terms 
of  contemporary  social  utility.  This  again  is  an  educational 
problem,  above  all  for  the  colleges. 

But  little  is  to  be  hoped  for  from  public  opinion  as  ordi- 
narily conceived.  On  the  other  hand,  everything  to  hope 
for  from  an  increase  of  critical  intelligence  and  a  system  of 
education  which  would  develop  truth-seeking  minds  ca- 
pable of  forming  real  opinions  on  matters  of  vital  public 
concern,  and  sow  them  broadcast  or  universalize  them. 

Leadership  and  the  function  of  elites  or  privileged  classes 
are  by  frank  confession  the  most  difficult  of  all  the  problems 
centering  about  social  progress.  Leadership  is  essential, 
and  speciahzed  capacity  not  only  natural  but  altogether 
desirable.  Progress  requires  constant  increments  of 
superior  minds  to  freshen  the  streams  of  knowledge  and  to 
quicken  their  current.  There  are  classes,  there  are  aristoc- 
racies, and  rightly,  so  long  as  differences  in  ability  exist. 
Nobody  would  question  or  object  to  the  sanctification  of 
these  class  distinctions  did  they  not  carry  with  them  certain 
pretensions,  unconscious  or  avowed,  notably  the  right  to 
exploit  rather  than  to  serve.     Perhaps  it  is  true  that  in 


542  THEORIES   OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

the  evolution  of  the  race  any  aristocracy  was  better  than 
no  aristocracy.  But  I  can  find  no  irrefragable  evidence  to 
support  the  pessimistic  conclusion  that  the  majority  of 
human  beings  are  predestined  by  tragic  necessity  "  to  consti- 
tute the  pedestal  of  an  oligarchy."  Leadership  at  any  price 
has  been  the  cry,  and  it  has  meant  usually  the  extinction  or 
oppression  of  one  class  and  the  selection  of  another,  or  it 
has  meant  anarchy  and  warfare  in  high  places.  It  is  not 
inappropriate  to  wonder  if  men  have  not  labored  under  a 
superstition  of  leadership  and  trusted  too  naively  in 
exterior  circumstances  to  provide  a  guide  instead  of  looking 
within  themselves  for  light  and  guidance.  Modern  psy- 
chologists hint  at  enormous  unsuspected  sub-conscious 
reservoirs  of  energy  within  us  —  second,  third,  twelfth, 
fiftieth  "winds"  perhaps.  Is  it  not  time  to  cease  paying 
with  no  questions  asked  the  price  demanded  by  Caesar 
or  John,  Warwick  or  Richard  Third,  Napoleon  or  Bis- 
marck ?  Many  so-called  popular  uprisings  used  to  illustrate 
the  incapacity  of  the  "hydra-headed  monster,  the  popu- 
lace," were  in  reahty  only  ghastly  regimes  of  selfish  interest 
personified  in  egotistical  or  fanatic  'leaders.'  This  must 
not  be  construed  as  minimizing  true  genius.  Utilize  the 
elite ;  cultivate  genius,  if  that  be  possible ;  endow  it  if 
necessary  to  protect  it  from  want  (great  inventive  genius 
has  scarcely  ever  been  appropriately  cared  for) ;  reward  it 
according  to  real  contribution ;  but  make  it  an  aristocracy 
like  that  of  Aristides,  who  in  a  memorable  debate  challenged 
his  opponent  in  these  terms :  "it  is  for  us  to  struggle  both 
now  and  ever,  which  of  us  shall  perform  the  greatest  services 
to  his  country."  To  accomplish  this  noble  purpose  two 
technical  problems  must  be  solved.  First,  some  method 
of  grading  accurately  productive  service  in  order  to  secure 
proper  recognition  and  reward :  neither  monarchy  nor 
plutocracy  has  worked  out  a  solution  yet ;   whether  democ- 


SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSIONS  543 

racy  can  do  so  remains  to  be  seen.  Second,  an  educational 
system  which,  albeit  unable  to  breed  geniuses,  can  train 
specialists  and  develop  high  abilities,  while  at  the  same  time 
performing  the  equally  indispensable  function  of  raising 
the  whole  people  to  such  a  measure  of  self-reliance  and 
cooperation  that  they  can  utilize  the  treasures  of  skilled 
leadership. 

Religion,  like  war  and  leadership,  has  been  costly  in 
human  evolution.  But  on  the  whole  it  has  been  worth  at 
least  part  of  the  price  and  will  easily  be  worth  all  it  costs  in 
the  future  if  it  can  free  itself  from  the  mummy  clothes  of 
organized  superstition,  from  intolerance  and  the  use  of 
coercion,  from  identification  with  dogma  and  ecclesiasticism; 
if  it  can  function  increasingly  as  demonstration  instead  of 
dogma,  as  pure  spiritual  activity,  nourishing  the  roots  of 
faith,  imagination  and  moral  idealism,  opening  up  new  hori- 
zons, and  redeeming  men  from  the  lower  interest-planes  of 
food,  sex,  and  social  domination.  To  a  considerable  extent 
it  can  aid  in  energizing  the  social  sentiments  and  offer  an 
antidote  against  mechanized  thought.  Systematic  theology, 
however,  is  of  very  dubious  value  to  social  progress.  Its 
dogma  and  its  speculations  appear  rather  as  a  disservice, 
because  they  tend  almost  inevitably  to  passive  adaptation 
and  quietism,  if  not  fatalistic  acceptance  of  a  given  social 
order.  Theology  becomes  so  easily  mechanistic  that 
religion  itself  must  come  to  the  rescue.  The  notion  of  an 
Infinite  Intelligence  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  with 
which  we  cooperate  {i.e.,  Infinite  Cooperative  Conscious- 
ness), is  valuable  so  long  as  it  does  not  degenerate  into  a 
trivial  meddlesome  Providence.  And  the  God-thought  in 
general  is  of  service  so  long  as  it  challenges  to  personal 
spiritual  attainment  and  does  not  suffocate  the  attitude  of 
free  inquiry  or  cherish  the  illusion  that  progress  is  a  gift 
of  the  gods. 


544  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

To  the  idealist,  as  we  have  seen,  this  world's  issues  are 
at  bottom  mental,  and  progress  is  a  two-dimensional  move- 
ment, the  elevation  of  ideals  and  the  extension  of  justice 
and  right.  Liberty  and  justice,  then,  rather  than  mere  con- 
tentment or  happiness  are  its  touchstones.  Both  idealists 
and  intellectualists  agree  that  drift  can  be  turned  into 
mastery  only  by  willing  it ;  that  is,  by  taking  thought 
humanity  can  master  its  fate  and  captain  its  soul.  But  it 
is  a  costly  process :  mastery  comes  only  by  intense  effort 
along  the  lines  of  enlarging  the  zone  of  positive  knowledge, 
developing  critical  intelligence,  overcoming  fear,  particu- 
larly the  fear  of  thinking  resolutely,  and  harmonizing  senti- 
ment and  thought.  These  are  the  real  ''costs  of  progress." 
Since  progress  can  come  only  through  the  ministry  of 
thought  (some  of  it  definitely  applied  to  problems  of  human 
advance,  the  rest  to  doing  each  sort  of  work  in  the  best 
possible  way,  hoping  that  it  or  its  by-products  may  func- 
tion progress-wards),  and  since  human  energy  is  limited  in 
quantity,  it  follows  that  thought  and  energy  must  not  be 
diverted  into  wasteful  or  needless  channels  —  warfare, 
manufacture  of  extravagant  luxuries,  production  for  pro- 
duction's sake.  This  does  not  mean  any  sort  of  taboo  on 
art,  however.  Art  is  not  a  luxury ;  it  is  a  spirit,  an  attitude. 
It  is  what  makes  life  worth  while.  It  is  not  things  but  a 
life  to  lead.  It  is  the  mark  of  a  fine  discrimination  of 
values;  hence  is  inseparable  from  the  Hfe  of  a  progressive 
group. 

The  critics  of  this  view  of  progress  contend  that  mere 
endeavor  to  advance  is  not  enough,  because  progress  is 
largely  the  by-product  of  unintentionally  beneficent  moves. 
Leisure  and  good  intention,  they  say,  will  produce  audiences 
and  buyers,  but  not  artists.  Knowledge  would  appear  to 
be  under  some  kind  of  control,  but  cannot  insure  mastery 
over  fate  because,  in  the  first  place,  great  advances  in 


SUMMARY  AND   CONCLUSIONS  545 

knowledge  depend  upon  individual  genius,  which  is  wholly 
accidental  and  incalculable.  Secondly,  there  are  surely 
limits  beyond  which  human  knowledge  cannot  pass,  and 
those  limits  are  already  in  sight.  Thirdly,  the  uses  and 
results  of  ideas  cannot  be  controlled  :  witness  the  evil  by- 
products of  invention.  Fourth,  it  is  idle  to  set  ourselves 
definite  goals,  for  the  world  with  all  its  phenomena  is 
absolutely  purposeless.  To  the  first  objection  we  reply 
that  education  and  improved  means  of  dissemination  put 
both  the  results  and  the  tools  of  science  at  the  disposal  of  a 
constantly  increasing  number  of  men ;  which  means  that 
latent  stores  of  human  ability  are  more  easily  unlocked  and 
that  the  area  from  which  genius  may  be  recruited  is  con- 
stantly widening.  The  second  objection  is  answered  by 
the  plain  everyday  fact  that  the  higher  science  climbs  the 
wider  stretches  its  possible  fields  of  conquest.  Physical 
science,  psychology,  and  the  science  of  society  are  still 
in  their  veriest  infancy.  The  burden  of  proving  the  exist- 
ence of  an  early  limit  to  their  career  rests  upon  the  objectors  : 
so  far  they  have  merely  stated  their  feeling  without  pro- 
ducing the  proofs.  The  third  and  fourth  objections  are 
more  formidable.  We  may  admit  that  absolute  mastery 
of  our  course  is  a  dream  rather  than  a  fact,  since  the  world 
of  Chance  overtops  the  httle  province  of  Law.  But  it 
does  not  seem  impossible  to  control  the  main  direction  of 
movement.  Surprises  like  the  judicial  interpretation  of 
the  Fifteenth  Amendment  may  occur,  but  in  the  long  run 
they  are  neutralized.  In  any  event  man  must  make  the 
effort  to  control.  To  do  otherwise  is  to  sit  down  fatalisti- 
cally and  invite  destruction.  Bear  in  mind,  however,  that 
by  effort  I  do  not  mean  mere  random  activity,  or  good  will, 
or  kindly  intention  :  I  mean  resolute  intent,  informed  by 
science.  If  we  perish  in  spite  or  because  of  that  effort, 
we  perish,  that  is  all.  But  we  shall  have  had  the  satis- 
2n 


546  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

faction  of  trying  to  eliminate  blind  luck  and  to  reduce  the 
dimensions  of  ''skittish  fortune's  hall."  Meanwhile  it  is 
idle  to  trust  to  by-products  of  unintentionally  beneficent 
moves.  If  they  ultimate  in  progress  it  is  always  because 
somebody  other  than  the  immediate  mover  grasps  the 
significance  of  the  move  and  turns  it  to  good  account  in 
terms  of  human  value. 

From  another  angle  is  thrust  the  objection  that  growth 
in  knowledge  will  not  insure  progress  because  man  is  only 
slightly  rational :  sentiments,  emotions,  instincts,  habits, 
predominate  over  intellect.  This  we  admitted.  Yet  with 
the  proviso  that  instinct  is  no  safe  guide,  being  altogether 
too  crude.  And  feeling,  while  undoubtedly  the  final 
arbiter  of  conscious  behavior,  is  equally  blind  unless  illu- 
minated by  knowledge.  Ignorance  and  superstition  beget 
a  nasty  brood  of  sentiments.  Imagination,  likewise,  needs 
feeding  on  fact.  Moral  perception  is  sheer  relativity,  and 
requires  increasing  knowledge  to  function  at  higher  levels. 
Hence  the  office  of  education  takes  on  a  new  significance. 
If  it  is  to  become  an  effective  ally  in  social  advance,  it 
must  add  to  its  work  of  social  control  and  passing  on  the 
mores  the  higher  function  of  releasing  mind  and  evoking 
intelligence.  The  educational  system  for  a  democracy 
should  insure  opportunity  for  mental  output  and  social 
expression  to  all.  It  should  spread  the  ideas  of  the  fittest, 
the  elite,  the  great  minds,  instead  of  coddhng  mediocrity 
and  tradition.  Social  education  involves  the  twofold 
task  of  communicating  a  sense  of  social  responsibility  and 
of  challenging  individual  mental  power :  on  the  one  hand 
the  "practice  of  associated  action,"  the  ability  to  sub- 
ordinate oneself  to  a  clearly  perceived  and  worthy  social 
purpose  ;  on  the  other,  the  practice  of  independent  thought 
even  though  it  run  into  heresy,  radical  non-conformity,  and 
deliberate  rejection  of  petty  canons  of  respectability.     This 


SUMMARY   AND    CONCLUSIONS  547 

is  the  excuse  for  having  devoted  so  much  space  to  the  analy- 
sis of  human  personaHty.  For  society  is  mental  integra- 
tion, an  integration  of  selves.  Consequently  when  we 
speak  of  willing  progress  we  mean  really  rearranging  cer- 
tain elements  in  the  human  self,  evangelizing  it,  in  the 
widest  sense.  But  this  cannot  come  about  merely  by 
moral  preaching.  Social  organization,  including  economic, 
political,  domestic,  and  educational  institutions,  will  need 
readjusting  to  make  ethical  appeals  more  than  empty  words. 
This  is  not  by  any  means  Utopian,  but  calls  only  for  the 
broader  application  and  utilizing  of  certain  familiar  natural 
dispositions  in  men.  You  will  not  need  to  stand  men  on 
their  heads  to  force  them  into  a  'social  point  of  view.' 
The  impulse  is  there  already  and  only  needs  encourage- 
ment, like  prairie  grass  in  April. 

This  long  analysis  will  hardly  admit  of  compression  into 
a  Single  formula :  truth  balks  at  such  narrow  limits,  and 
men  have  learned  to  suspect  the  aphorism  as  an  insidious 
half-truth  at  best.  But  as  nearly  as  I  can  state  what  to  me 
is  the  end  of  human  progress,  it  would  be  somewhat  in  this 
form :  that  the  final  goal  of  all  things,  if  they  have  or  can 
be  made  to  have  a  goal,  is  not  some  merely  static  per- 
fection for  God,  society,  or  the  individual ;  it  is  the  identi- 
fication of  personal  interest  with  social  interest  to  an 
increasing  degree.  You  may  paraphrase  this  as  consecrated 
intelligence,  or  as  reconciling  freedom  of  individual  will 
with  evolution  of  society,  or  as  the  identification  of  man 
individualized  and  man  socialized.  Anybody  who  has 
ever  tried  it  knows  that  such  a  harmony  does  not  come  at 
one  swoop.  To  believe  so  is  to  revert  to  the  age  of  fable. 
Neither  can  humanity  dodge  the  final  responsibility  for 
its  own  fate.  To  call  in  the  gods  is  to  court  disaster. 
However  you  conceive  the  end  of  all  things,  man  was  surely 
placed  on  this  planet  to  work  out  his  own  salvation.     I  am 


548  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

not  at  all  sure  that  the  inevitable  and  automatic  end  of  the 
social  process  is  increasing  installments  of  justice  and  greater 
and  greater  elevation  and  expansion  of  the  great  masses  of 
men.  But  I  believe  it  can  be  made  the  end  by  steady, 
persistent,  preoccupation  with  the  problem,  and  by  that 
alone.  Moreover,  I  hold  it  to  be  neither  sacrilege  nor  lese- 
majesty  to  believe  that  with  applied  sociology  and  an  edu- 
cation leavened  by  it  rests  this  problem  of  harmonizing 
more  closely  through  enlightened  will  the  facts  of  social 
achievement  and  progressive  social  welfare. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND    SUPPLEMENTARY 

READINGS 

CHAPTER   I 

Moody,  W.  v.,  Gloucester  Moors  (in  his  Poems,  1901). 
West,  J.  E.,  The  Epic  of  Man  (in  his  Poems  of  Human  Progress). 
Whitman,  Walt,  Song  of   the  Open    Road,  Pioneers!    O  Pioneers! 
and  other  poems. 

CHAPTER  II 

Hamel,  Frank,  Human  Animals. 

Durkheim,  E.,  The  Elementary  Forms  of  the  Religious  Life,  pp. 

48-70,  198-204,  240-272. 
Lehmann,  A.,  Aberglaube  and  Zauberei,  Kapitel  i,  2,  27-40. 
Levy-Bruhl,  J.,  Les  Fonctions  Mentales  dans  les  Societes  Inferieures. 
Todd,  A.  J.,  "Primitive  notions  of    the  self,"  ^w.  Jour.  Psychol., 

27  :  171-202,  Apr.,  1916. 
The  Primitive  Family  as  an  Educational  Agency,  ch.  iv. 

CHAPTER   HI 

Bax,  Belfort,  The  Roots  of  Reahty,  ch.  iv. 

Bergson,  H.,  Creative  Evolution,  ch.  i-ii. 

Boodin,  J.  E.,  " The  existence  of  social  minds,"  Am.  Jour.  Social., 

19 :  1-48. 
Butler,  Bishop  Jos.,  Dissertation  of  Personal  Identity,  in  his  Works, 

vol.  i. 
Green,  T.  H.,  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  Sec.  55-73. 
Janet,  P.,  The  Mental  State  of  Hystericals,  especially  pp.  484  ff. 
Subconscious    Phenomena,     ch.     iv.      (A    symposium    inch 

Miinsterberg,  Jastrow,  et  al.) 
Jordan,  D.  S.,  Footnotes  to  Evolution,  ch.  x. 

Mackenzie,  J.  S.,  Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy,  2d  ed.,  ch.  iii-v. 
Ribot,  T.,  Diseases  of  Personality. 

549 


550  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Sidis,  B.,  and  Goodhart,  S.  P.,  Multiple  Personality,  pp.  81-226, 

Sidis,  B.,  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  ch.  x-xxvi. 

Stratton,   G.   M.,   Experimental  Psychology  and  its  Bearing  upon 

Culture,  ch.  vi,  xi,  xiv,  xv. 
Ward,    Jas.,   Article    "Psychology"   in    Encyclopaedia    Britannica, 

9th  ed. 

CHAPTERS  IV-V 

Books 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  The  Individual  and  Society. 

Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  in  Mental  Development, 

(esp.  ch.  i-iv,  xi-xv). 
Mental  Development  in  the  Child  and  the  Race,  esp.  ch.  vii-xii. 


Bergson,  H.,  Creative  Evolution,  ch.  i-ii. 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  The  Basis  of  Social  Relations,  ch.  ii. 

Bynner,  Witter,  The  New  World. 

Cooley,  C.  H.,  Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order,  ch.  i,  iv-vi, 

xii,  etc. 
Fowler,  Thos.,  Progressive  Morality,  ch.  i. 

'Kropotkin,  P.,  Mutual  Aid  (rev.  ed.  1910),  ch.  i-ii,  appendices  i-vi. 
MacDougall,  W.,  Social  Psychology,  3d  ed.,  ch.  vi-viii. 

ark,  Thistleton,  The  Unfolding  of  Personality. 
Natorp,  P.,  Sozialpadagogik. 

Odin,  A.,  La  Genese  des  Grands  Hommes,  vol.  i,  pt.  ii-iv. 
Pearson,  K.,  The  Chances  of  Death,  etc.,  pp.  103-39. 
Royce,  J.,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  ch.  xii. 
Scott,  C,  Social  Education,  ch.  i. 
Tarde,  G.,  Laws  of  Imitation,  ch.  iii,  v-vii. 
Thorsch,  B.,  Der  Einzelne  und  die  Gesellschaft. 
Trotter,  W.,  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War,  pp.  11-59,  112- 

38,  etc. 
Urwick,  E.  J.,  A  Philosophy  of  Social  Progress,  ch.  v-vii. 
Ward,  L.  F.,  Applied  Sociology,  ch.  ix,  etc. 
Whitman,  Walt,  Poem,  "There  was  a  child  went  forth." 

Periodicals 

Boodin,  J.  E.,  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  19 :  1-48. 

Hall,  G.  S.,  "Some  aspects  of  the  early  sense  of  self,"  Am.  Jour. 
Psychol,  9:351-382. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      55 1 

Hirst,  E.  W.,  "Morality  as  inter-personal,"  InternaU.  Jour.  Ethics, 

22 :  298-321. 
MacDougall,   W.,    "The  social  basis  of  individuality,"  Am.   Jour. 

Sociol.,  18 :  1-20. 
Mead,  G.  H.,  "Social   psychology   as    counterpart   to    physiological 

psychology,"  Psychological  Bulletin,  6  :  401-8. 
"Social    consciousness  and  the  consciousness  of  meaning," 

Ibid.,  7  :  397-405. 
Stoops,  J.  D.,  "The  institutional  self,"  Internatl.  Jour.  Ethics,  23: 

193-203. 

CHAPTERS  VI-VII 
Books 

Adams,  Brooks,  Law  of  Civilization  and  Decay,  Preface,    ch.    xii, 

and  passim. 
Alexander,  S.,  Moral  Order  and  Progress,  pp.  384-98. 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  "A  Fragment  on  Progress,"  in  his  Essays  and  Ad- 
dresses, 2d  ed.,  pp.  241-82. 
Bristol,  L.  M.,  Social  Adaptation,  Introduction  and  ch.  xvii. 
Biicher,  K.,  Industrial  Evolution,  ch.  i-ii. 

Carpenter,  E.,  Civilization,  its  Cause  and  Cure,  ed.  1910,  pp.  1-50. 
Carver,  T.  N.,  Sociology  and  Social  Progress,  pp.  1-14. 
Comte,   A.,    Positive    Philosophy    (Martineau    transl.),  bk.   vi,    ch. 

ii,  vi. 
Condorcet,  M.  J.  A.,  Esquisse  d'un  Tableau  Historique  des  Progres 

de  I'Espece  Humain. 
Crozier,  J.  B.,  Civilization  and  Progress,  3d  ed.,  pp.  366-440. 
Federici,  R.,  Les  Lois  du  Progres,  vol.  ii,  pp.  32-5,  44,  127,  136,  146-7, 

158  ff.,  223,  etc. 
Froude,  J.,  Essay  on  Progress,  in  Short  Studies,  2d  Series. 
Giddings,  F.  H.,  "The  Ethics  of  Social  Progress"  in  the  collection 

Philanthropy  and  Social  Progress  (Crowell,  1907). 
Gramzow,  O.,  Geschichte  der  Philosophie  seit  Kant,  S.  650  ff. 
Guyot,  Yves,  The  Tyranny  of  Socialism,  pp.  16-25. 
Harris,   Geo.,    Civilization   Considered  as  a   Science   (Lond.    1861), 

Preface  and  pp.  1-60. 
Hecker,  J.,  Russian  Sociology,  pp.  80,  128,  247,  195-6,  223,  etc. 
Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory,  pp.  8,  152-3, 

etc. 
Morals  in  Evolution,  vol.  i,  pp.  20  fif. ;  vol.  ii,  pp.  278  fif. 


552  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Hughes,  C.  E.,  Conditions  of  Progress  in  a  Democratic  Government, 

Lecture  I. 
Joly,  F.,  Man  Before  Metals,  pp.  327-58. 
King,  L,  The  Development  of  Religion,  ch.  iv-vii. 
Lankester,  Sir  E.,  Degeneration:   a  Chapter  in  Darwinism. 
Lilienfeld,  P.  von.  La  Pathologic  Sociale,  Introduction. 
Mallock,  W.  H.,  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  pp.  93  ff. 
Marvin,  F.  S.,  The  Living  Past,  pp.  4-5,  etc. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  System  of  Logic,  Bk.  vi,  ch.  x-xi. 
Nietzsche,  F.,  Der  Wille  zur  Macht,  sec.  90,  etc. 
Osborn,  H.  F.,  Men  of  the  Old  Stone  Age,  Preface,  Introduction, 

and  ch.  i. 
Patten,  S.  N.,  The    Reconstruction  of  Economic    Theory,  ch.    xv 

(in  Suppl.  to  Ann.  Amer.  Acad.,  44:  83-8). 
Petrie,  W.  M.  F.,  The  Revolutions  of  Civilization,  2d  ed.  ch.  i,  vi,  vii. 
Robinson,  J.  H.,  The  New  History,  pp.  239-40,  265,  etc. 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  Discours  sur  I'inegalite,  etc.,  part  ii. 
Schaeffle,  A.,  Abriss  der  Sociologie,  S.  235  ff. 
Bau  und  Leben  des  Socialen  Korpers,  2^  Aufl.  vol.  i,  pp.  8, 

266,  306-7,  etc. 
Shaw,  G.  B.,  Three  Plays  for  Puritans,  pp.  199-203. 

•  Man  and  Superman,  pp.  181-2,  193,  206-7. 

Sorel,  G.,  Les  Illusions  du  Progres,  ch.  v. 

Spencer,  H.,  "Progress,  its  law  and  cause,"  Westm.  Rev.,  Apr.,  1857, 

repr.  in  Everyman's  ed.  of  his  Essays,  pp.  153-197. 
Todd,  A.  J.,  The  Primitive  Family,  pp.  44-8,  110-34. 
Urwick,  E.  J.,  A  Philosophy  of  Social  Progress,  ch.  x. 
Vacher  de  Lapouge,  Les  Selections  Sociales,  pp.  61,  77  fif.,  100  fT., 

443,  ch.  XV,  etc. 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  Social  Environment  and  Moral  Progress. 
Ward,  L.  F.,  Pure  Sociology,  pp.  223-55. 

Applied  Sociology,  ch.  ii,  iv,  vii,  xi. 

Wines,  F.  H.,  Punishment  and  Reformation,  ch.  iv. 

Periodicals 

Abbott,  L.,  "Henri  Bergson:  The  philosophy  of  progress,"  Outlook, 

103:388-91. 
Barth,  P.,  "Der  Frage  des  sittlichen  Fortschritts  der  Menschheit," 

VierteJjahrschrift  f.  wiss.  Philos.,  1899,  pp.  75-116. 
Bryce,  J.,  "What  is  progress?"  Atl,  Mo.,  100:  145-56. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      553 

Campbell,  W.  E.,  "A  philosophy  of  social  progress,"  Cath.    World, 

98:721-31. 
Carmichael,  R.  D.,  "Prospect  of  human  progress,"  Science,  39  (N. 

S.)  :  883-90. 
Chapin,  F.  S.,  "Moral  progress,"  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  May,  1915,  pp.  467- 

71- 
Dellcpiane,  A.,  "Le  progres  et  sa  formule.     La  lutte  pour  le  progres," 

Rev.  Internatl.  de  Sociologic,  Jan.,  1912,  pp.  1-30. 
Dewey,  J.,  "Progress,"  Inlcrnall.  Jour.  Ethics,  Apr.,  1916,  pp.  311-22. 
Hibbcn,  J.,  "The  philosophical  aspects  of  evolution,"  Philos.  Rev., 

19:  113-36- 
Morley,  J.,  "Some  thoughts  on  progress,"  Educ.  Rev.,  29:  1-17. 
Niceforo,  A.,  "Les   transformations  du   crime  et   la  civilisation  mo- 

derne,"  Scuola  posiiiva,  11 :  641-2. 
Patten,  S.  N.,  "Theories  of  progress,"  Am.  Econ.  Rev.,  2  :  61-8. 
Ramsay,  Sir  W.  M.,  "St.  Paul's   philosophy  of  history,"  Contemp. 

i?CT.,  92:327-43. 
Sergi,  G.,  "Qualche  idee  sul  progresso  umano,"  Rivista  italiana  di 

Sociologia,  vol.  17,  No.  i. 
Shanahan,   E.    T.,  "Evolution   and   progress,"    Cath.   World,    loi : 

145-56. 

Sims,  N.  L.,  "Social  progress  and  the  purposeful  utilization  of  sur- 
plus," Am.  Jour.  Sociol.  22  :  369-380. 

Trobridge,  G.,  "Progressive  and  unprogressive  nations,"  Westm.  Rev., 
166:41-53. 

Vierkandt,  A.,  "Bemerkungen  zur  Frage  des  sittUchen  Fortschritts 
der  Menschheit,"   Vierteljahrschrijt  J.  wiss.  Philos.,    1899,    pp. 

455-90. 
Woods,  E.  B.,  " Progress  as  a  sociological  concept,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol., 

12 : 779-821. 
Yarros,  V.,  "Human  progress:  The  idea  and  the  reality,"  Am.  Jour. 

Social.,  21 :  15-29. 

CHAPTER   IX 

Abercrombie,  R.,  Seas  and  Skies  in  Many  Latitudes,  pp.  38-44. 

Bonacina,  L.,  Climatic  Control,  ch.  v-vii. 

Buckle,  H.  T.,  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  ch.  ii. 

Davis,  W.  M.,  "Geographic  factors  in  the  development  of  South 

Africa,"  Jour.  Race  Developm.,  2  :  131-46. 
Dexter,  E.  G.,  Weather  Influences,  ch.  vii-xv. 


554  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Dickson,  H.  N.,  Climate  and  Weather,  ch.  x. 

Giles,  G.  M.  J.,  Climate  and  Health  in  Hot  Countries,  pt.  ii,  sec.  i. 

Goldenweiser,  A.  A.,  "Culture  and  environment,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol., 

21 : 628-33. 
Goode,  J.  P.,  "The  human  response  to  the  physical  environment," 

Jour,  of  Geography,  3  :  i2>3-Ai- 
Gregory,  H.  E.,  Keller,  A.  G.,  and  Bishop,  A.  L.,  Physical  and  Com- 
mercial Geography,  ch.  vii-ix. 
Hayes,  E.  C,  "Effect  of  geographic  conditions  upon  social  realities," 

Am.  Jour.  Sociol.  19  :  813-24. 
Hettner,  A.,  "Geographie  des  Menschen,"  Geographische  Zeitschrift, 

13:400-25. 
Huntington,    E.,  Climate   and  Civilization,  pp.    i-io,  251-94,   etc. 

Pulse  of  Asia,  Introd.  and  pp.  312-4,  325,  359-85. 

The  Climatic  Factor  as  Illustrated  in  Arid  America,  ch.  ii-iv, 

vi-vii,  ix-x,  xvii-xviii;  "Geographic  environment  and  Japanese 

character,"  Jour.  Race  Developm.,  2  :  256-81. 
Hume,  David,  Essay  on  National  Characters. 
Leroy-Beaulieu,  A.,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  vol.  i,  pp.  138-94. 
Montesquieu,  C.  L.,  Esprit  des  Lois,  livres  xiv,  xvii,  xviii. 
Peschel,  F.,  Races  of  Man,  pp.  314-8;    reprinted  as  "The  Zone  of 

the   Founders   of   Religion,"   in   Carver,    Sociology  and   Social 

Progress,  pp.  271-5. 
Ripley,  W.  Z.,  Races  of  Europe,  ch.  xxi. 
Schliiter,  E.,  "Ueber  das  Verhaltniss  von  Natur  und  Mensch,"  Geogr. 

Ztsjt.,  13:  514  ff. 
Semple,   E.,  Influences  of   Geographic  Environment,  ch.   i,  v,  vii, 

xiii,  xiv,  xvi,  xvii. 
Ward,  R.  D.,  Climate  Considered  especially  in  relation  to  Man,  ch. 

vii,  viii,  xi. 
Wissler,  C,  "Aboriginal  maize  culture  as  a  typical  culture  complex," 

Am.  Jour.  Sociol.,  21  :  656-61. 
Woodruff,  C.  E.,  The  Effects  of  Tropical  Light  on  White  Men,  ch. 

i,  vi,  viii-xii. 

CHAPTER  X 

Arreat,  L.,  "Inventions  et  changements  sociaux,"  Rev.  Int.  de  So- 

ciologie,  20 :  241-55. 
Burgess,  E.  W.,  The  Function  of  Socialization  in  Social  Evolution, 

ch.  ii-v. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      555 

Mason,  O.  T.,  Origins  of  Invention,  esp.  Preface,  ch.  i-iii,  ix,  xii. 

McGee,  W.J,  and  Thomas,  C,  Prehistoric  America,  ch.  viii. 

Morgan,  L.  T.,  Ancient  Society,  parts  i,  iv. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  Discours  sur  I'inegahte,  etc.,  pt.  ii. 

Tanner,   Amy,   "Certain  social  aspects  of  invention,"  Am.  Jour. 

Psychology,  26 :  388-416. 
Taussig,  F.  W.,  Inventors  and  Moneymakers,  ch.  i-iii. 
Todd,   A.  J.,   "Socializing  the  engineer,"    The   Technograph,   May, 

1913,  pp.  132-9. 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  Anthropology,  ch.  viii-xi. 

CHAPTER  XI 

Bagehot,  W.,  Lombard  Street,  ch.  iii. 

Carlile,  W.  W.,  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Money,  pt.  ii. 

Del  Mar,  A.,  Money  and  Civihzation,  Introd.  and  selected  chapters. 

■ — A  History  of  Money  in  Ancient  Countries,  ch.  i,  xix,  xx. . 

Gunton,  G.,  Principles  of  Social. Economy,  ch.  i. 

Jevons,  W.  S.,  Money  and  the  Mechanism  of  Exchange,  ch.  i-iv. 

Kinley,  D.,  Money,  ch.  i,  ii,  v. 

Ridgeway,  W.,  The  Origins  of  Metallic  Currency  and  Weight  Stand- 
ards, ch.  ii,  iii,  v,  vi. 

Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  sec.  142-55. 

Walker,  F.  A.,  Money  in  its  Relations  to  Trade  and  Industry, 
ch.  i-ii. 

Wells,  D.  A.,  Robinson  Crusoe's  Money  (ed.  1892). 

Withers,  H.,  The  Meaning  of  Money,  ch.  i-ii. 

CHAPTER  XII 

Cunningham,  W.,  The  Use  and  Abuse  of  Money,  pt.  i. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  Capital  the  Mother  of  Labour,  in  his  Collected  Essays, 
vol.  ix,  pp.  146-87. 

Jacks,  L.  P.,  "War  and  the  wealth  of  nations,"  All.  Mo.  116  :  419-26. 

Marx,  K.,  Capital,  vol.  i,  parts  vii-viii. 

Ross,  E.  A.,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  pp.  217-25. 

Shaw,  Albert,  The  Outlook  for  the  Average  Man,  ch.  ii. 

Sumner,  W.  G.,  Power  and  Beneficence  of  Capital,  in  his  Earth  Hun- 
ger and  Other  Essays,  pp.  337-53. 

Challenge  of  Facts  and  Other  Essays,  pp.  156-8. 

Veblen,  T.,  The  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class,  ch.  ii-iv. 


556  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


CHAPTER   XIII 

Allin,  A.,  "The  basis  of  sociality,"  Am.  Jour.  Social.  8:  75-84. 

Brooks,  J.  G.,  American  Syndicalism,  esp.  ch.  viii-xiii,  xvi. 

Descamps,  P.,  La  Science  Sociale,  Nov.  1913,  p.  39,  etc. 

Durkheim,  E.,  De  la  Division  du  Travail  Social,  2d  ed.,  pp.  98-102, 
211-66,  391-406. 

Federici,  R.,  Les  Lois  du  Progres,  vol.  ii,  pp.  146-7. 

George,  H.,  Progress  and  Poverty,  bk.  x,  ch.  iii. 

Hobson,  J.  A.,  Work  and  Wealth,  ch.  vi-vii. 

Hunter,  R.,  Violence  and  the  Labor  Movement,  pt.  ii,  esp.  ch.  x. 

Levine,  L.,  The  Labor  Movement  in  France,  A  Study  in  Revolu- 
tionary Syndicalism,  ch.  v,  vi,  viii. 

Mikhalovsky,  U.  K.,  Works,  vol.  iii,  and  Durkheim's  Theory  of 
Division  of  Labor,  summarized  in  English  by  Hecker,  Russian 
Sociology,  pp.  146-50. 

Plato,  Republic,  bk.  ii. 

Webb,  Sydney  and  Beatrice,  "What  Syndicalism  Means,"  published 
as  a  supplement  to  The  Cnisade,  Aug.  191 2. 

Zitslaflf,  J.,  Arbeitsgliederung  in  Maschinenbauunternehmungen, 
(Sammlung  nationalokonomischer  und  statistischer  Abhandlung 
des  Staatswissenschaftlichen  Seminars  zu  Halle,  19 13). 

CHAPTER  XIV 

Beard,  C.  A.,  An  Economic  Interpretation  of  the  Constitution. 

Economic  Origins  of  Jeffersonian  Democracy. 

Boudin,  L.,  Socialism  and  War,  esp.  ch.  i-ii. 

Carver,  T.  N.,  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  ch.  ii,  v,  vii. 

Clark,  V.  S.,  "The  influence  of  manufacturing  upon  pohtical  senti- 
ment in  the  United  States  from  1820  to  i860,"  Am.  Hist.  Rev. 
22  :  58-64,  Oct.  1916. 

Crozier,  J.  B.,  Civilization  and  Progress,  pp.  386  ff. 

Culbertson,  W.  S.,  Alexander  Hamilton,  pp.  81  ff.  and  passim. 

Engels,  F.,  Socialism,  Utopian  and  Scientific,  ch.  ii-iii. 

Fitch,  M.  H.,  Physical  Basis  of  Mind  and  Morals. 

Ghent,  W.  J.,  Mass  and  Class,  pp.  1-30. 

Gregory,  Keller,  and  Bishop,  Physical  and  Commercial  Geography, 
ch.  xiii-xiv. 

Kautsky,  K.,  Ethics  and  the  Materialist  Conception  of  History,  ch.  v. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS     557 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  History  of  European  Morals,  vol:  i,  pp.  143,  158, 

236,  etc. 
Loria,  A.,  Economic  Foundations  of  Society,  esp.  pt.  i. 

La  Morphologic  Sociale,  pp.   5-22. 

Marx,  K.,  and  Engels,  P.,  Communist  Manifesto. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  On  Liberty,  ch.  i-ii. 

Rabbeno,  U.,  The  American  Commercial  Policy,  Essay  3. 

Seligman,  E.  R.  A.,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History. 

Simons,  A.  M.,  Social  Forces  in  American  History,  Preface,  ch.  vi, 

viii-xi,  etc. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  pp.  SS^  ii4.  163-6,  475-6,  etc. 
Todd,  A.  J.,  Primitive  Family,  pp.  11,  18-22,  140,  etc. 

CHAPTER   XV 

Adams,  E.  D.,  Power  of  Ideals  in  American  History. 

Hayes,  E.  C,  "Social  values,"  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  18:  470-7. 

Macgregor,  D.  H.,  Evolution  of  Industry,  pp.  54-61. 

SchmoUer,    G.,    Grundriss    der   Allgemeinen    Volkswirtschaftslehre, 

vol.  ii,  pp.  653-4,  675,  etc. 
Taussig,  F.  W.,  Inventors  and  Moneymakers,  ch.  i-iii. 
Toynbee,  A.,  Industrial  Revolution,  ch.  xiv. 

CHAPTER  XVI 

Cockerill,  T.  D.  A.,  "Biology  and  human  progress,"  All.  Mo.,  loi : 

728-37. 
Conklin,  E.  G.,  Heredity  and  Environment  in  the  Development  of 

Men,  ch.  iv-vi. 
Conn,  H.  W.,  Social  Heredity  and  Social  Evolution,  ch.  i,  xii. 
Giddings,  F.  H.,  Democracy  and  Empire,  ch.  v. 
Huxley,   T.   H.,    "The   struggle   for   existence   in   human   society," 

Nineteenth  Century,  '^a.n.  1888;   reprinted  as  ch.  i  in  his  Social 

Diseases  and  Worse  Remedies. 
Keller,  A.  G.,  Societal  Evolution,  ch.  i. 
Nietzsche,  F.,  The  Will  to  Power,  passim. 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  "Ethics  and  the  Struggle  for  Existence,"  in  his 

Social  Rights  and  Duties,  vol.  i,  pp.  221-55. 
Thomson,  J.  A.,  and  Geddes,  Patrick,  Evolution,  pp.  143-82. 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  "Human  selection,"  Fortnightly  Review,  Sept.  1890, 

reprinted  in  his  Studies  Scientific  and  Social,  vol.  i,  pp.  509-26. 


558  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Bulletins  of  the  Eugenics  Record  Ofifice,  Cold  Springs  Harbor. 
Conklin,  E.  G.,  Heredity  and  Environment,  etc.,  ch.  v-vi. 
Darwin,  Leonard,  "Eugenics  and  war,"  Eugenics  Rev.,  July,  191 5. 
Davenport,  C.  B.,  Heredity  in  its  Relation  to  Eugenics,  pp.   1-4, 

252-71. 
Devine,  E.  T.,  Editorial  in  The  Survey,  Apr.  27,  1912. 
Ellis,  H.,  The  Problem  of  Race  Regeneration,  pp.  60-71. 

"The  new  social  hygiene,"  Yale  Rev.,  n.  s.  i :  364-75. 

Gallon,  F.,  Hereditary  Genius. 
V      "  Eugenics,  its  scope  and  aims,"  reprinted  in  Am.  Jour.  Social., 

10:  1-25. 

\ "Studies  in  eugenics,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol.,  11  :  11-25. 

Holt,  W.  L.,  "The  economic  factors  in  eugenics,"  Pop.  Sci.  Mo., 

Nov.  1913,  pp.  471-83- 
Johnson,  R.,  "Eugenics  and  so-called  eugenics,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol., 

20 :  98-103. 
Kellicott,  W.  E.,  Social  Direction  of  Human  Evolution,  ch.  iii. 
Kohs,  S.  C,  "New  light  on  eugenics,"  Jour,   of  Heredity,  6:446- 

452. 
Meyer,  A.,  "The  right  to  marry,"   The  Survey,  June  3,   1916,  pp. 

243-6. 
Proctor,  R.  A.,  Hereditary  Traits. 
Saleeby,  W.,  Methods  of  Race  Regeneration,  pp.  16-63. 

"The  progress  of  eugenics,"  Forum,  Apr.  19 14. 

Schuster,  E.,  Eugenics,  esp.  ch.  iv,  vii,  ix-xi. 

Skelton,  H.  S.,  "Political  aspects  of  eugenics,"  Contemp.  Rev.,  107: 

105-12. 
Southard,  E.  E.,  "Eugenics  vs.  Cacogenics,"  Jour,  of  Heredity,   5: 

408-14. 
Thompson,  J.  .A.,  "Eugenics  and  war,"  Eugen.  Rev.,  Apr.  1915. 
Wallace,    A.    R.,    "Human   progress:    past   and    present,"   Arena, 

Jan.   1892,  repr.   in  Studies  Scientific  and  Social,   vol.  ii,  pp. 

493-509- 
\   Ward,  L.  F.,  "Eugenics,  euthenics  and  eudemics,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol., 

18:  737-54- 
Woods,  E.  B.,  "Social  waste  of  unguided  personal  ability,"  Am. 
Jour.  Social.,  19 :  358-69. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND    SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      559 

CHAPTER   XVIII 

Babington,  W.  D.,  Fallacies  of  Race  Theories,  Essays  i,  vii,  etc. 
Baker,  R.  S.,  Following  the  Color  Line,  esp.  ch.  viii. 
Boas,  F.,  The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man,  ch.  i,  ii,  iv,  vi. 

"Race  mixture,  etc.,"  Science,  n.  s.  29 :  847  ff. 

ryce,  Jas.,  The  Relations  of  the  Advanced  and  the  Backward  Races 
of  Mankind  :   Romanes  Lecture,  1902. 
Chamberlain,  S.  H.,  Die  Grundlagen  des  xix  Jahrhunderts. 
Cornejo,  M.  H.,  "La  race,"  Rev.  Intend,  de  Sociol.,  19 :  161-89. 
Cummings,    J.,    "Population    and   ethnic    character,"    Quar.   Jour. 

Econ.,  14  :  1 71-2 11. 
Darwin,  C,  Descent  of  Man,  vol.  i,  ch.  vii. 
^  Davenport,  C.  B.,  "The  racial  element  in  national  vitality,"  Pop. 
Sci.  Mo.,  86:331-3. 

"Influence  of  heredity  upon   human  society,"  Ann.  Amer. 

Acad.,  34  :  18  ff. 
»►  Diggs,  S.  H.,  "Relation  of  race  to  thought  expression,^'-  Jo2ir.  Philos. 

Psychol,  and  Sci.  Mcth.,  12  :  346-58. 
^Finot,  J.,  Race  Prejudice,  pt.  i,  ii,  v. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  "Race  and  language,"  Contemp.  Rev.,  29:  711-41. 
^Galton,  F.,  Hereditary  Genius  (ed.  1914),  pp.  325-61. 
Gobineau,  J.  A.,  Essai  sur  ITnegalite  des  Races  Humaines. 
Gumplowicz,  L.,  Der  Rassenkampf,  sec.  10-38. 

Sociologie  und  Politik,  sec.  23-35. 

Outlines  of  Sociology,  pt.  iii. 

"^ Hall,  G.  S.,  "The    point    of    view    toward    primitive    races,"    Jour. 
Race  Developm.,  i  :  5-1 1. 
Holmes,  W.  H.,  "Sketch  of  the  origin,   development  and  probable 
destiny  of  the  races  of  men,"  Amer.  Anthropol.,  n.  s.,  4 :  369-91. 
Hone,  J.  M.,  "Count  Arthur  of  Gobineau:   Race  Mystic,"  Contemp. 
Rev.,  104 :  94-103. 
'^eane.  A.,  Man  Past  and  Present,  ch.  i-ii ;   Ethnology,  ch.  vii-ix. 
"^  Keller,  A.  G.,  "A  sociological  view  of  the  '  Native  Question,' "  Yale 
Rev.,  Nov.  1903,  pp.  259-75. 
Kelsey,  C,  "Influence  of  heredity  and  environment  upon  race  im- 
provement," Ann.  Amer.  Acad.,  34:  3-8. 
Kidd,  B.,  Social  Evolution,  ch.  ii-iii. 

Le  Bon,  G.,  L'evolution  psychologique  des  peuples,  2d  ed. 
Lyall,  A.  C,  "Race  and  religion,"  Fortn.  Rev.  78  :  926-42. 


560  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

"Marett,  R.  R.,  Anthropology,  ch.  iii. 
Mayo-Smith,  R.,  "Theories  of  mixture  of  races  and  nationalities," 

Yale  Rev.,  3  :  166-86. 
Mecklin,  J.  M.,  Democracy  and  Race  Friction,  ch.  ii,  iii,  v,  vi. 
Odum,  H.  W.,  "Standards  of  measurement  for  race  development," 

Jour.  Race  Developm.,  5:364-83. 
Petrie,  W.  M.  F.,  The  Revolutions  of  Civilisation,  ch.  vi-vii. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  The  Changing  Chinese,  ch.  ii-iii. 
Royce,  J.,  "Race  questions  and  prejudices,"  Internatl.  Jour.  Ethics, 

i6:265flf. 
-Ripley,  W.  Z.,  Races  of  Europe,  ch.  xix-xx;   Qiiar.  Jour.  Econ.,  14: 

426-8. 
Shaler,  N.,  "Race  prejudice,"  Atl.  Mo.,  58 :  510  ff. 
Spiller,  G.  (editor).  Papers  on  Inter-Racial  Problems  Communicated 

to  the  First  Universal  Races  Congress,  Lond.  191 1. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  pp.  70-8,  109-18,  473,  etc. 
^Tenney,  A.  A.,  Social  Democracy  and  Population,  pp.  72  ff. 
Thomas,  W.  I.,  "Psychology  of  race  prejudice,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol., 

9:593-611.       V 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  Anthropology,  ch.  i,  iii. 
Woodruff,  C.  E.,  "Some  laws  of  racial  and  intellectual  development," 

Jour.  Race  Developm.,  3  :  156-75. 
Woodworth,  R.  S.,  "Racial  differences  in  mental  traits,"  Science, 

n.  s.,  31 :  171-86. 

CHAPTER  XIX 

Books 

Angell,  N.,  The  Mirage  of  the  Map,  Internatl.  Conciliation  Tract 

No.  53. 
Bagehot,  W.,  Physics  and  Politics,  section  on  The  Uses  of  Conflict, 
von  Bernhardi,  F.,  Germany  and  the  Next  War,  ch.  i,  ii,  v. 
Carnegie,  A.,  War  as  the  Mother  of  Valor  and  Civilization  (Peace 

Society  of  N.  Y.,  1910). 
Fried,  A.  H.,  A  Few  Lessons  Taught  by  the  Balkan  War,  I.  C.  Tract 

No.  74. 
Holsti,  R.,  Some  Superstitions,  Customs  and  Beliefs  in  Primitive 

Warfare,  in  Festskrift  tillegnad  Edvard  Westermarck. 
Kidd,  B.,  Social  Evolution,  ch.  ii. 
Lodge,  Sir  O.,  The  Irrationality  of  War,  I.  C.  Tract  No.  56. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND    SUPPLEMENTARY    READINGS      561 

Nasmyth,  G.,  Social  Progress  and  the  Darwinian  Theory. 
Nietzsche,  F.,  Der  VVille  zur  Macht ;  Also  Sprach  Zarathustra. 
Novicow,  J.,  Les  Luttes  entre  les  Societes  Humaines. 

La  Guerre  et  ses  Pretendus  Bienfaits. 

Patrick,  G.  T.  W.,  Psychology  of  Relaxation,  eh.  vi. 

Pearson,  K.,  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,  pp.  24  f. 

Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  vol.  x,  "War  and 

Mihtarism." 
Steinmetz,  S.  R.,  Die  Philosophic  des  Krieges  (Natur  und  Kultur- 

philosophische  BibHothek,  bd.  vi,  1907). 
Stratton,  G.  M.,  The  Control  of  the  Fighting  Instinct,  I.  C.  Tract 

No.  73. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  War  and  Other  Essays,  pp.  1-40. 
Woods,  F.  A.,  and  Baltzly,  A.,  Is  War  Diminishing?     A  Study  of 

the  Prevalence  of  War  in  Europe  from  1450  to  the  Present  Day. 

Periodicals 

Bourne,  R.,  "The  moral  equivalent  for  universal  military  service," 

New  Republic,  July  i,  1916,  pp.  217-9. 
Bryce,  J.,  "War  and  human  progress,"  All.  Mo.,  118  :  301-315. 
James,  W.,  "The  moral  equivalent  of  war,"  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  77  :  400- 

410 ;  same  in  McClure's  Mag.,  35  :  463-8. 
Johnson,  G.  E.,  "The  fighting  instinct,  its  place  in  life,"  Survey, 

Dec.  4,  191S,  pp.  243-8. 
Jordan,  D.    S.,  "The  human  harvest,"  Chautauqua  Mag.,  53:178- 

194. 
Smith,  W.  A.,  "  Some  false  consolations  of  war,"  AU.  Mo.,  116  :  843-7. 
Steinmetz,  S.  R.,  "Die  Bedeutung  des  Krieges  bei  den  Kulturvolk- 

ern,"  Zeitschrift  fur  Socialwissenschaft,  May,  1914- 

CHAPTER  XX 

Capen,   E.   W.,   "The   Western   Influence  in  China,"   Jour.    Race 

Developm.,  3 :  412-37. 
Keller,  A.  G.,  Societal  Evolution,  ch.  ix. 

Lochner,  L.,  The  Cosmopolitan  Club  Movement,  I.  C.  Tract  No.  61. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  pp.  225-53. 
Sims,  N.  L.,  A  Hoosier  Village  (Columbia  Studies,  vol.  46),  pp.  163- 

181. 
Waitz,  T.,  Introd.  to  Anthropology,  pp.  344-9- 
2  o 


562  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

CHAPTER  XXI 

Dickinson,  G.  L.,  Justice  and  Liberty,  pp.  54-133. 
Ely,  R.  T.,  Property  and  Contract,  ch.  i,  iii,  xxii. 

Evolution  of  Industrial  Society,  pp.  255-70. 

Hayes,  E.  C,  Introd.  to  the  Study  of  Sociology,  ch.  vii-x. 

King,  W.  I.,  The  Wealth  and  Income  of  the  People  of  the  United 

States,  pp.  78-82. 
-Letourneau,  C,  Property,  its  Origin  and  Development. 
^Mallock,  W.  H.,  Property  and  Progress. 
^   More,  P.  E.,  Aristocracy  and  Justice,  pp.  127-48. 
•Morgan,  L.  H.,  Ancient  Society,  pt.  iv. 
Parmelee,  M.,  Poverty  and  Social  Progress,  ch.  vi-vii. 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  Discours  sur  I'origine  et  les  fondements  de  I'inegalite 

parmi  les  hommes. 
Spahr,  C.  B.,  The  Present  Distribution  of  Wealth  in  the  United  States, 

p.  69,  etc. 
Spencer,  H.,  Principles  of  Sociology,  sec.  536-41. 

CHAPTER  XXII 

Addams,  Jane,  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  ch.  iii-iv. 
Bosanquet,  Helen,  The  Family,  pt.  i. 

Dealey,  J.  Q.,  The  Family  in  its  Sociological  Aspects,  ch.  vi,  vii,  xii. 
Fiske,  J.,  "The  Meaning  of  Infancy,"  Essay  xii  in  his  Excursions 

of  an  Evolutionist. 

Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  ch.  xvi,  xxi,  xxii. 

Gillette,  J.  M.,  The  Family  and  Society,  ch.  i. 

Grosse,  E.,  Die  Formen  der  Familie  und  die  Formen  der  Wirtschaft. 

Parsons,  E.  C,  The  Family,  pp.  20-1 11. 

Riis,  J.  A.,  The  Peril  and  the  Preservation  of  the  Home,  Lect.  i. 

SchmoUer,  G.,  Grundriss,  etc.,  selections  transl.  in  Am.  Jour.  Social., 

20 :  521-2. 
Snider,  Denton  J.,  Social  Institutions,  pp.  59-163. 
Spencer,  H.,  Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  i,  pt.  iii. 
Starcke,  C.  N.,  La  Familie  dans  les  Differentes  Societes. 
Sutherland,  A.,  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct,  vol.  i, 

ch.  i-ii,  vi,  x,  etc. ;  vol.  ii,  ch.  xix-xx. 
Thwing,  C.  F.  and  C.  B.,  The  Family,  ch.  vi,  vii,  xii. 
.  Todd,  A.  J.,  The  Primitive  Family  as  an  Educational  Agency. 


/ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      563 

Westermarck,  E.,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  3d  cd.,  p.  50,  etc. 
VVhetham,  W.  C.  D.  and  C.  D.,  The  Family  and  the  Nation. 

CHAPTER  XXIII 

Aristotle,  Politics. 

Bagehot,  W.,  Physics  and  Politics,  pt.  iii-iv. 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  A  Fragment  on  Progress,  in  his  Essays  and  Addresses, 

2d  ed.,  pp.  259-80. 
Burke,  E.,  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France  (ed.  1790). 
Garner,  J.  W.,  Introd.  to  Political  Science,  pp.  316-7. 
Harrison,  Frederic,  Order  and  Progress,  pp.  107-124,  207-241. 
Jenks,  J.  W.,  Governmental  Action  for  Social  Welfare,  ch.  ii-vii. 
Lieber,  F.,  On  Civil  Liberty  and  Self  Government. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  Essay  on  Liberty. 
Montesquieu,  C.  L.,  Esprit  des  Lois,  bk.  iv. 
^L.  Oppenheimer,  Franz,  The  State. 

Pollock,  F.,  History  of  the  Science  of  PoHtics. 

Russell,  B.,  "Education  as  a  political  institution,",  yl//.  Mo.,  117: 

750-7- 
SchmoUer,  G.,  Grundriss,  vol.  ii,  pp.  542  ff. ;  see  also  excerpts  in  Am. 

Jour.  Socio!.,  20:  528-9. 
Sidgwick,  H.,  Elements  of  Politics,  p.  604,  etc. 
Snider,  D.  J.,  Social  Institutions,  pp.  336-48. 
Spencer,  H.,  Principles  of  Sociology,  sec.  440  ff. 
Ward,  L.  F.,  Dynamic  Sociology,  vol.  i,  p.  526;  ii,  pp.  168,  212,  545, 

574,  etc. 

CHAPTER  XXIV 

Berolzheimer,  F.,  The  World's  Legal  Philosophies,  ch.  vii. 
Carter,  J.  C,  Law,  its  Origin,  Growth  and  Function,  passim. 
Cherry,  R.  R.,  Lectures  on  the  Growth  of  Criminal  Law  in  Ancient 
Communities. 
y  Dee  Mallonee,  L.,  "The  growth  of  custom  into  law,"  Am.  Law  Rev., 

49:  235-48. 
•   Dewey,  John,  "Force,  Violence  and  I^aw,"  New  Republic,  Jan.  22, 
1916. 
Gareis,  K.,  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Law,  pt.  i. 
Ihering,  R.  von,  Law  as  a  Means  to  an  End,  ch.  vi,  viii, 
Korkunov,  N.  M.,  General  Theory  of  Law,  bk.  i,  iii. 


y 


564  THEORIES   OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

^  Maine,  Sir  H.  S.,  Ancient  Law,  ch.  i-v. 
Marvin,  F.  S.,  The  Living  Past,  pp.  11 5-7. 
Miraglia,  L.,  Comparative  Legal  Philosophy,  bk.  i,  ch.  vii-x. 
Pattee,  W.  S.,  The  Essential  Nature  of  Law,  ch.  v;    "The  place  of 

law  in  civilization,"  The  Advocate,  i  :  225  ff. 
Pound,  Roscoe,  "Social  problems  and  the  courts,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol., 

18:331-41. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  Social  Control,  ch.  xi. 
Spencer,  A.  W.,  Mid-West  Quarterly,  2  :  156-61. 
Spencer,  H.,  Principles  of  Sociology,  sec.  529-35. 
Stevens,  E.  G.,  "Christianity  and  law,"  Am.  Law  Rev.,  49:  1-44. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  ch.  i-iii,  xi,  xiii,  etc. 

■ Earth  Hunger,  pp.  161  ff. 

Thompson,  D.  G.,  Social  Progress,  ch.  iv. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

Bagehot,  W.,  Physics  and  Politics,  section  on  The  Age  of  Discussion. 
Butler,  N.  C,  "Law  and  public  opinion,"  Am.  Law  Rev.,  49:374- 

88. 
Carver,  T.  N.,  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  ch.  i. 
Dicey,  A.  V.,  Lectures  on  the  Relation  of  Law  and  Public  Opinion 

in  England. 
Foulke,  W.  D.,  Natl.  Municipal  Rev.,  3  :  245-55. 
Ghent,  W.  J.,  Our  Benevolent  Feudalism,  ch.  vii. 
Godkin,  E.  L.,  Unforeseen  Tendencies  of  Democracy,  pp.  183-225. 
Hadley,  A.  T.,  "The  organization  of  public  opinion,"  No.  Am.  Rev., 

201  :  191-6,  Feb.,  1915. 
Harrison,  Frederic,  Order  and  Progress,  pp.  95-106. 
Jenks,  J.  W.,  "The  guidance  of  public  opinion,"  Am.  Jour.  Social.,  1 : 

158-169. 
Lowell,  A.  L.,  Public  Opinion  and  Popular  Government,  ch.  i,  etc. 
Mallock,  W.  H.,  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  pp.  185-7,  etc. 
Muir,  Ramsey,  Nationalism  and  InternationaHsm,  ch.  i. 
Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,  vol.  ix,  "Freedom 

of  Communication,"  1914. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  Social  Psychology,  ch.  xviii,  xxii. 

Social  Control,  ch.  x. 

Russell,  B.,  "Education  as  a  political  institution,"  Atl.  Mo.,  117: 

750-7. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      565 

SchmuUcr,  G.,  Grundriss,  clc,  vol.  ii,  pp.  542  ff-  ^  (^« 

Shepard,  W.  J.,  Am.  Jour.  Sociol.,  15  :  32-60.^  K.^   • 

Yarros,    V.,   Am.    Jour.    Sociol.,    5:372-82;    15:321-34;    22:203-'' 

II.     (Various  aspects  of   the  problem  of   the  press   and  public 

opinion.) 

CHAPTERS  XXVI-XXVn 

Bristol,  L.  M.,  Social  Adaptation,  pp.  283-91. 

Burke,  E.,  Rellections  on  the  Revolution  in  France  (ed.  1790),  pp. 

53,  76,  and  passim. 
Carlyle,  Thos.,  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship  (ed.  1907),  pp.  1-17,  196- 

200. 
Carver,  T.  N.,  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  ch.  vi. 
Cooley,  C.  H.,  Social  Organization,  ch.  xiii-xv,  xviii-xxvii. 
Crozier,  J.  B.,  Civilization  and  Progress,  3d  ed. 
History  of  Intellectual  Development  on  the  Lines  of  Modern 

Evolution,  vol.  i,  iii. 
Davis,  R.  G.,  Westminster  Rev.,  171  :  639-45  ;  174  :  379-82. 
Dickinson,  G.  L.,  Justice  and  Liberty,  pp.  13-33,  etc. 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  Essay  on  Uses  of  Great  Men.  —— 
Fite,  W.,  Individualism. 
Gal  ton,  F.,  Hereditary  Genius. 

Harris,  Geo.,  Inequality  and  Progress,  ch.  iv,  v,  ix-xvii. 
Howard,  C,  Atl.  Mo.,  105  :  120-3.  _ 
Izoulet,  J.,  La  cite  moderne. 

James,  W.,  "Great  men  and  their  environment,"  and  "The  impor- 
tance of  individuals,"  in  The  Will  to  Believe  and  Other  Essays, 

pp.  216-262. 
Lippmann,  W.,  A  Preface  to  Politics,  esp.  ch.  i,  vi,  ix.     •• 
Ludovici,  A.  M.,  A  Defence  of  Aristocracy,  ch.  i,  vi-ix. 
Mallock,  W.  H.,  Aristocracy  and   Evolution;   Social   Equality,  ch. 

vi-x. 
Mecklin,  J.  M.,  "Academic  freedom  and  status,"  School  and  Society, 

3  :  624-30. 
Michels,  R.,  Political  Parties  :  a  Sociological  Study  of  the  OHgarchical 

Tendencies  of  Modern  Democracy,  pt.  i. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  System  of  Logic,  bk.  vi,  ch.  xi,  sec.  3-4. 
More,  P.  E.,  Aristocracy  and  Justice,  pp.  3-38,  103-23. 
Mumford,  E.,  "The  origins  of  leadership,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociol.,  12  :  216- 

40;  367-97,  500-31. 


566  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Nietzsche,  F.,  Antichrist,  sec.  57,  etc. 

Paine,  Thos.,  The  Rights  of  Man. 

Richter,  J.  P.,  Levana,  ch.  i. 

Rogers,  A.  E.,   "Burke's  poHtical  philosophy,"  Am.  Jour.  Social.;. 

18:51-76. 
Ross,  E.  A.,  Foundations  of  Sociology,  pp.  227-34. 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  Discours  sur  I'origine  de  I'inegalit'e,  etc. 
Shaw,  G.  B.,  Socialism  and  Superior  Brains  (Fabian  Tract  No.  146, 
''^^  1909;   originally  printed  in  Fortn.  Rev.,  1894). 

Spencer,  H.,  Study  of  Sociology,  ch.  ii  (pp.  22-42  in  191 2  American 

ed.). 
Veblen,  T.,  Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class,  ch.  iii-v,  viii,  xiv. 
Woods,  F.  A.,  The  Influence  of  Monarchs. 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 


/ 


Deniker,  J.,  The  Races  of  Man,  pp.  127-43. 
Dewey,  J.,  How  We  Think,  ch.  xiii. 
Federici,  R.,  Lois  du  Progres,  vol.  ii,  p.  127,  etc. 
de  la  Grasserie,  R.,  "Du  metamorphisme  d'une  nationalite  par  le 
langage,"  Rev.  Philosophique,  Sept.,  1913. 
.  Gumplowicz,  L.,  Der  Rassenkampf,  pp.  249  fif. 

Keller,  A.  G.,  Societal  Evolution,  pp.  59,  77,  131,  211,  etc. 
-'Marett,  R.  R.,  Anthropology,  ch.  v. 
'Morgan,  L.  H.,  Ancient  Society,  pt.  ii,  ch.  v. 
MiiUer,  Max,  Three  Introductory  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Thought ; 
Three  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  3d  ed. 
...  Noire,  L.,  Die  Welt  als  Entwickelung  des   Geistes,  ch.  ix,  pt.  iii, 
transl.  and  publ.  by  Open  Court  Co.,  as  "On  the  origin  of  lan- 
guage and  the  logos  theory." 
^^,-^rylor,  E.  B.,  Anthropology,  ch.  iv-vii. 
^^'AVaitz,  T.,  Anthropology,  vol.  i,  p.  277,  etc. 

Wallas,  G.,  The  Great  Society,  pp.  51-3.  j      2  ^ 

^^  Whitney,  W.  D.,  Language  and  the  Study  of  Languages.  -  '^^^^^^'^  JlL^*-/' 

CHAPTER  XXIX 
Books 

Allen,  Grant,  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God. 
Bois,  H.,  La  V'aleur  de  I'Experience  Religieuse. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      567 

Boutroux,  E.,  Science  and  Religion  in  Contemporary  Philosophy. 

Brace,  C.  L.,  Gesla  Chrisli,  4th  ed.,  esp.  ch.  x,  xxiii. 

Buclde,  H.  T.,  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  ch.  v. 

Burke,  E.,  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France,  pp.  134  ff. 

Caird,  E.,  Evolution  of  Religion. 

Carver,  T.  N.,  The  Religion  Worth  Having,  esp.  pp.  1-90. 

Chatterton-Hill,  G.,  The  Sociological  Value  of  Christianity. 

Coe,  G.  A.,  The  Spiritual  Life:   Studies  in  the  Science  of  Religion. 

Comte,  A.,  Positive  Philosophy,  Bohn  ed.,  vol.  ii,  pp.  315  f?. 

Clodd,  E.,  The  Childhood  of  Religions. 

Crozier,  J.  B.,  Civilization  and  Progress,  3d  ed.,  pp.  214-75,  412-3, 

415-9- 

History  of  Intellectual  Development,  etc.,  passim. 


.Davenport,  F.  M.,  Primitive  Traits  in  Religious  Revivals. 
Davies,  T.  W.,  Magic,  Divination  and  Demonology. 
Dickinson,  G.  L.,  Rehgion. 

Dill,  S.,  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurehus,  bk.  iv. 
Dobschiitz,  E.  von.  The  Influence  of  the  Bible  on  Civilization. 
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4th  ed. 
■  Durkheim,  E.,  The  Elementary  Forms  of  the  Religious  Life,  bk.  i. 
Elwang,  W.  W.,  The  Social  Function  of  Religious  Belief  (Univ.  of 

Missouri  Studies,  Soc.  Sci.  Ser.,  vol.  ii). 
Foster,  G.  B.,  The  Function  of  Rehgion  in  Man's  Struggle  for  Exist- 
ence. 
J'razer,  Sir  J.  G.,  The  Golden  Bough,  3d  ed. 
Guyau,  J.  M.,  L'irrehgion  de  I'avenir. 
Hartmann,  F.  von,  The  Religion  of  the  Future. 
Hertzka,  T.,  Das  sociale  Problem,  ch.  vi. 
.Hoffding,  H.,  The  Philosophy  of  Religion. 

Hoffmann,  F.  S.,   The   Sphere  of  Religion:   a   Consideration  of  its 
^  Nature  and  of  its  Influence  upon  the  Progress  of  Civilization. 

James,  W.,  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience. 
Jastrow,  M.,  Aspects  of  Religious  Belief  and  Practice  in  Babylonia 
'^  and  Assyria. 

^XJevons,  F.  B.,  An  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Rehgion. 
•Kidd,  B.,  Social  Evolution,  ch.  v. 

Kimball,  J.  C,  The  Romance  of  Evolution  and  its  Relation  to  Reli- 
gion. 
King,  I.,  The  Development  of  Religion. 


568  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL  PROGRESS 

Lang,  A.,  Magic  and  Religion, 
^ea,  H.  C,  Sacerdotal  Celibacy. 
Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  A  History  of  European  Morals. 
Leroy-Beaulieu,  A.,  The  Empire  of  the  Tsars,  vol.  ii. 
^  Leuba,  J.,  The   Psychological  Origin   and  the  Nature  of  Religion; 
^  A    Psychological  Study  of  Religion,  its  Origin,  Function  and 

Future.  ^^  ^ 

Lippert,  J.,  Geschichte  des  Priesterthums.     f^  <-'vjca/m^ 
Lombroso,  C,  Crime,  its  Causes,  etc.,  ch.  x. 
Marett,  R.  R.,  Anthropology,  ch.  viii. 

-.-—  ■ The  Threshold  of  Religion. 

^,„^  Martineau,  Jas.,  A  Study  of  Religion. 

Miiller,  Max,  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion. 

Nietzsche,  F.,  Antichrist. 

Parsons,  E.  C,  Religious  Chastity. 

Reichardt,  E.  N.,  The  Significance  of  Ancient  Religions  in  Relation 

to  Human  Evolution  and  Brain  Development. 
Reid,  W.  A.,  Laws  of  Heredity,  pp.  487-96,  etc. 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  Pagan  Christs,  pt.  i. 
Romanes,  G.  J.,  Thoughts  on  Religion.- 
Ross,  E.  A.,  Social  Control,  ch.  xii,  xvi. 

Schmidt,  C,  Social  Results  of  Early  Christianity,  pp.  409-43.^ 
Spencer,  H.,  Principles  of  Sociology,  pt.  vi. 
Starbuck,  E.  D.,  Psychology  of  Religion. 
»-  Stratton,  G.  M.,  The  Psychology  of  the  Religious  Life. 
—     Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  pp.  224,  605-27,  etc. 

^ Tiele,  C.  P.,  Science  of  Religion. 

Webster,  D.  H.,  Rest  Days. 

/White,  A.  D.,  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology 
in  Christendom. 

Periodicals 

Alexander,  H.  B.,  "Religion  and  progress,"  Hibbcrt  Jour.,  9:  169- 

87. 
Boutroux,  E.,  "The  essence  of  religion,"  Coniemp.  Rev.,  Dec.  1914, 

pp.  787-805. 
Drake,  D.,  "Natural  selection  in  religious  evolution,"  Biblical  World, 

47:  231-6. 
Elwood,  C.  A.,  "The  social  function  of  religion,"  Am.  Jour.  SocioL, 

19:  289-307. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      569 

Gladden,  W.,  "Religion  and  the  schools,"  All.  Mo.,  115:  57-68. 
Hull,    E.  R.,   "The   church  and  civilization,"   Calholic  Miiui,   14; 

25-44- 
Mecklin,  J.  M.,  Inlernl.  Jour.  Ethics,  23  :  298-310. 
Meyer,  E.   C,  "Creating  social  values  in  the  tropics,"  Am.  Jour. 

Social.,  21  :  662-5. 

CHAPTER   XXX 

Bax,  Belfort,  The  Roots  of  Reality,  ch.  vii. 

Bossuct,  J.  B.,  Discours  sur  I'histoire  universelle. 

Bridgewater  Treatises. 

Bristol,  L.  M.,  Social  Adaptation,  pp.  298-312. 

Campbell,  W.  W.,  Science,  n.  s.  42  :  238,  etc. 

Carver,  T.  N.,  Essays  in  Social  Justice,  pp.  232,  etc. 

Comte,  A.,  Positive  Philosophy,  bk.  i,  ch.  i;    bk.  vi,  ch.  ii,  iii,  vi 

(Martineau  transl.). 
Dewey,  J.,  Intcrnatl.  Jour.  Ethics,  Apr.  1916,  pp.  311-322. 
Dickinson,  G.  L.,  Justice  and  Liberty,  pp.  222-32. 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  Works,  ist  Amer.  ed. 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  Essay  on  Illusions  (in  Conduct  of  Life). 
Ellwood,  C.  A.,  The  Social  Problem,  Introduction. 
Eucken,  R.,  The  Meaning  and  \'alue  of  Life,  pp.  79-147. 
Hegel,  J.  W.,  Philosophy  of  History  (Sibree's  transl.). 
Lessing,  G.  E.,  The  Education  of  the  Human  Race  (ed.  by  Haney). 
Lloyd,  A.  H.,  "The  case  of  purpose  against  fate  in  history,  Am.  Jour. 

Socio!.,  17  :  491-51 1. 
Mackintosh,  R.  C,  Hegel,  ch.  xiv. 
McCabe,   Jos.,    "The    philosophy   of   revolt,"   English   Rev.,   Nov. 

1914,  pp.  430  ff. 
Morris,  G.  S.,  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  the  State  and  of  History,  pp. 

111-136. 
Kant,  I.,   Principles  of  Politics,  including  his  Essay  on  Perpetual 

Peace. 
Schaffle,  A.,  Bau  und  Leben  des  socialen  Korpers,  2e  Aufl.,  vol.  ii, 

pp.  65s  ff. 
Smith,  Adam,  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  part  iv,  ch.  i ;   part  vi, 

ch.  iii,  etc. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways  (see  the  topic.  Ideals,  in  index). 
Urwick,  E.,  A  Philosophy  of  Social  Progress,  pp.  286,  etc. 


570  THEORIES  OF   SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

White,  F.  E.,  Royce,  J.,  and  Baldwin,  J.  M.,  Discussions  in  Internatl. 
Jour.  Ethics,  6  :  99,  93-7  ;   5  :  489-500. 

CHAPTER   XXXI 

Bergson,  H.,  Creative  Evolution,  ch.  ii. 

Blair,  T.  S.,  Human  Progress:    What  can  Man  do  to  Further  It? 

pp.  168  ff. 
Buckle,  H.  T.,  Hist,  of  Civilization,  etc.,  ch.  iv. 
Bushee,  F.  A.,  "  Science  and  social  progress,"  Pop.  Set.  Mo.,  79:  236- 

251. 
Clifford,  W.  K.,  On  the  Aims  and  Instruments  of  Scientific  Thought 

(in  his  Lectures  and  Essays). 
Colvin,  S.  S.,  and  Bagley,  W.  C,  Human  Behaviour,  ch.  x-xi. 
Comte,  A.,  Positive  Philosophy,  bk.  vi,  ch.  xvi. 
Crozier,  J.  B.,  Civilization  and  Progress,  3d  ed.,  pp.  419-28. 
Draper,  J.  W.,  History  of  the  Conflict  between  Religion  and  Science, 

ch.  xi. 
Federici,  R.,  Les  Lois  du  Progres,  vol.  ii,  pp.  44,  136,  223,  etc. 
Gunton,  Geo.,  Principles  of  Social  Economics,  ch.  i-iii. 

Wealth  and  Progress,  pp.  188  ff. 

Hecker,  J.,  Russian  Sociology,  pp.  108,  199,  etc.,  summarizing  views 

of  Lavrov  and  Kareyev. 
Huxley,  T.  H.,  Controverted  Questions,  Prologue. 
Izoulet,  J.,  La  Cite  Moderne,  bk.  ii,  ch.  v-vi,  etc. 
Jacks,  L.  P.,  "Our  drifting  civilization,"  All.  Mo.,  117:  298-308. 
McDougall,  W.,  An  Introduction  to  Social  Psychology,  2d  ed.,  ch. 

ii,  iii,  XV. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  Logic,  bk.  vi,  ch.  ix,  sec.  7  ;   ch.  xi. 
Newcomb,  S.,  Side  Lights  on  Astronomy,  ch.  xx  (Relation  of  scientific 

method  to  social  progress). 
Novicow,  J.,  Les  Luttes  entre  les  Societes  Humaines,  pp.  404,  etc. 
Parmelee,  M.,  The  Science  of  Human  Behaviour,  ch.  xi,  xiii-xiv,  xx. 
Trotter,  W.,  Instincts  of  the  Herd  in  Peace  and  War,  pp.  1-65,  112- 

139- 
Wallas,  G.,  The  Great  Society,  ch.  iii,  x,  xi,  xii. 

CHAPTER   XXXII 

Brunetiere,  F.,  L'art  et  la  Morale. 
Crane,  Walter,  Ideals  in  Art. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY   AND   SUPPLEMENTARY   READINGS      57 1 

Dcnikcr,  J.,  Races  of  Man,  pp.  197-212. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  Essay  on  Beauty. 

Guyau,  J.  M.,  L'art  au  point  de  vue  sociologique,  3d  ed. 

Hunt,   W.   Holman,   Obligations   of   the    Universities    toward    Art 

(Romanes  Lecture,  1895). 
Ruskin,  J.,  The  Political  Economy  of  Art ;  Lectures  on  Art. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  Folkways,  pp.  135,  604,  627,  etc. 
Symonds,  A.,  The  Symbolist  Movement,  p.  152  and  passim. 
Tolstoi,  L.,  What  is  Art? 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  Anthropology,  ch.  xii. 

Brimmer,  M.,  Jour.  Social  Science,  15:  148-56. 

Chase,  W.  M.,  Outlook,  95  :  441-5. 

The  Craftsman,  17  :  515-27  ;   20  :  250-7. 

Godkin,  E.  L.,  The  Dial,  51  :  133-5. 

Holley,  H.,  The  New  Republic,  Apr.  24,  191 5,  pp.  301-2. 

Irving,  L.,  "Drama  as  a  factor  in  social  progress,"  Fortn.  Rev.,  102  : 

268-74. 
Lee,  Vernon,  Curr.  Lit.,  48  :  99-101. 
McFall,  H.,  Forum,  44:  557-68. 
Odenwald-Unger,  Ward,   Sargent,   and  others,  "The  fine  arts  as  a 

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Proceedings  of  the  National  Education  Association,  1908,  pp.  515-23, 

820-7;    191 1,  PP-  778-83. 

CHAPTER   XXXIIl 

Addams,  Jane,  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  ch.  vi. 

The  Spirit  of  Youth  and  City  Streets. 

Twenty  Years  at  Hull  House. 

Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  ch.  iii. 

Appleton,  L.  E.,  A  Comparative  Study  of  the  Play  Activities  of  Adult 
Savages  and  Civilized  Children. 

Ayres,  L.,  Laggards  in  Our  Schools. 

Bagley,  W.  C,  Educational  Values;  "Fundamental  distinctions  be- 
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Barth,  P.,  Erziehung  und  Gesellschaft,  in  Rein's  Encyclopadisches 
Handbuch  der  Padagogik,  Bd.  ii. 

Bauer,  A.,  La  culture  morale  aux  diver  degres  de  I'enseignement 
public. 


572  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Betts,  G.  H.,  Social  Principles  of  Education. 
Bloomfield,  M.,  Vocational  Guidance. 
Butterfield,  K.  L.,  Chapters  in  Rural  Progress. 
Carlton,  F.  T.,  Education  and  Industrial  Evolution,  ch.  ii-iv. 
Chapin,  F.  S.,  Education  and  the  Mores. 
Congres  International  de  I'education  sociale  (Proceedings). 
Cronson,  B.,  Pupil  Self-Government. 
^Davidson,  T.,  The  Education  of  the  Wage  Earners. 
Davies,  J.  L.,  The  Working  Men's  College. 
Davis,  J.  B.,  Vocational  and  Moral  Guidance. 
Dean,  A.  D.,  The  Worker  and  the  State. 
Dewey,  J.,  Democracy  and  Education. 

How  We  Think. 

Moral  Principles  in  Education. 

Schools  of  To-morrow. 

The  School  and  Society. 

Dopp,  K.  E.,  "A  new  factor  in  the  elementary  school  curriculum," 

Am.  Jour.  Sociol.,  8  :  145-57. 
^y^   Dresslar,  F.  B.,  Superstition  and  Education:   Univ.  of  Calif.  Publ., 

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Eslander,  J.,  Education  au  point  de  vue  sociologique. 
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Gill,  W.  L.,  The  School  Republic. 

A  New  Citizenship. 

Gillette,  J.  M.,  "An  outline  of  social  study  for  elementary  schools," 

Am.  Jour.  Social.,  19  :  491-509. 
Gould,  F.  J.,  Moral  Instruction,  its  Theory  and  Practice. 
Greene,  M.  L.,  Among  School  Gardens. 
Groos,  K.,  The  Play  of  Man. 

Gulick,  L.  H.,  Popular  Recreation  and  Public  Morality. 
Harris,  Geo.,  Civilization  Considered  as  a  Science,  pp.  62-195. 
Henderson,  C.  H.,  Education  and   the  Larger  Life,  ch.  i-ii,  x-xi. 

— — Pay  Day. 

Howard,  G.  E.,  Am.  Jour.  Sociol.,  16:  805-17. 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND   SUPPLExMENTARY   READINGS      573 

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Moore,  E.  C,  What  is  Education? 

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World  Today,  20 :  743-5  ;   Library  Journal,  38  :  566-8.) 
The   Playground   (and   other   publications   of   the   Playground   and 

Recreation   Association   of  America,   including   Proceedings   of 

annual  Congresses.) 
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Soc.  for  Promotion  of  Eng.  Educ,  4  :  39-50. 
Riis,  J.  A.,  Battle  With  the  Slum,  ch.  xiii-xv. 
Sadler,  M.  E.,  Continuation  Schools  in  England  and  Elsewhere. 
Scott,  Colin,  Social  Education. 
SmaD,  A.  W.,  "Some  demands  of  sociology  upon  pedagogy,"  Am. 

Jour.  Social.,  2  :  839-51. 
Spencer,  H.,  Education,  Intellectual,  Moral,  and  Physical. 
Todd,  A.  J.,  "Socializing  the  engineer,"  Technagraph,  27  :  132-9. 
Urwick,  E.  J.,  and  Woods,  R.  A.,  "The  settlement  movement  in 

England  and  America,"  Quarterly  Rev.,  440:  216-32. 
Vincent,  G.  E.,  The  Social  Mind  and  Education. 
Ward,  E.  J.,  The  Social  Center. 
Ward,  L.  F.,  Pure  Sociology,  pp.  20-1,  255,  etc. 


574  THEORIES  OF  SOCIAL   PROGRESS 

Ward,  L.  F.,  Dynamic  Sociology,  vol.  ii,  pp.  598,  602,  632,  etc. 
Ward,  W.  R.,  Student  Participation  in  School  Government. 
Ware,  F.,  Educational  Foundations  of  Trade  and  Industry. 
Woods,  R.  A.,  The  City  Wilderness. 
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INDEX 


Adaptation,  g6-7,  242,  417,  421-2. 
Altruism.  41,  59,  62,  131,  416,  424,  457. 
Altruistic  motives,  6. 
Amalgamation  of  races,  314  ff. 
Ancestor  worship,  434. 
Aristocracy,  380,  3Q1-2.  3QS.  403-5- 
Aristotle  cited,  62,  157,  346,  381,  465. 
Art  and  progress,  494  £E. 

B 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  cited,  33,  45,  49. 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  cited,  93,  104,  483. 
Beliefs,  function  of,  469. 
Bergson,  H.,  cited,  6,  19,  46,  94,  loi,  181, 

476. 
Birth  control,  244,  266,  531. 
Birth  rate,  120,  255,  266,  431-2. 
Bossuet  and  philosophy  of  history,  442-4. 
Buckle,  H.,  cited,  160  ff.,  170,  172,  429, 

46sflf.,482. 
Burke,  E.,  cited,  100,  337,  517. 


Cake  of  custom,  311. 

Capital,  88,  174,  Chap.  XII. 

Celibacy  and  eugenics,  432-3. 

Chance  vs.  control  in  progress,  544-6. 

Christianity  and  progress,  94  ;  the  family, 
429 ;  social  selection,  433 ;  race  sui- 
cide, 425. 

Church  not  the  moral  leader,  428. 

Civilization,  defined,  113  ff. ;  as  a  disease, 
134-6;  two  views  of,  505;  two  types, 
506. 

Classes  and  castes,  201,  396,  524;  vs. 
masses,  384 ;  ruling,  395  ;  inevitable, 
395,  404-5  ;  dangers  of,  396-7  ;  broken 
down  by  education,  397-9 ;  opposi- 
tion of  to  popular  education,  399-402  ; 
struggle  of,  230,  250. 

CommensaUty,  72. 


Communion  of  the  saints,  78. 
Communism,  326,  330. 
Competition  as  a  social  principle,  41. 
Comte,  A.,  cited,  41,  100,  115,  129,  231, 

381,  387,  421,  455  ff-,  482. 
Continuation  schools,  198. 
Cooley,  C.  H.,  cited,  35,  47,  230,  367,  397 
Cooperation  as  a  humanizing  force,  41 

88. 
Courts  as  hindrances  to  progress,  361-2 
Craniometry  and  race  mentaUty,  279-80 
Criticism,  function  of,  484,  544. 
Cross-fertilization  of  cultures,  309,  312 

318. 
Crozier,  J.  B.,  cited,  206,  396,  422,  457 
Custom,  177,  231,  232. 

D 

Dancing,  in  sexual  selection,   244 ;    and 

social  solidarity,  296-8. 
Darwin,  C.  R.,  cited,  40,  99,  243,  275. 
Decadence,  132,  143  ff.,  536. 
Degeneration,  95,  100,  262-3. 
Democracy,  133,  345,  384,  412,  524. 
Desire  as  a  social  force,  228,  474  ff. 
Dewey,  J.,  cited,  98,  99,  234,  356,   510. 
Dialectic  of  Mental  Development,  33. 
Dickinson,  G.  L.,  cited,  77,  415,  458-60. 
Discontent  as  a  social  force,  480. 
Discussion  as  a  social  art,  305,  345. 
Division  of  labor.  Chap.  XIII,  420. 
Domestication  of  animals,  176,  178. 
Drama,  social  function  of,  493-4. 

E 

Economic  interpretation  of  history. 
Chap.  XIV-XV;  reconciled  with 
ideologists,  228. 

Economic  man,  226. 

Education,  definitions  of,  5x9-20;  as 
discipline,  530-1 ;  as  a  selective  agency, 
254,    513;    evidences    of    inefficiency, 


575 


576 


INDEX 


522  ff;  as  solvent  of  class  barriers, 
397-9;  as  chief  progressive  agency, 
510-11,  548 ;  as  conservative  influence, 
513  ff;  and  industrialism,  211-13,  220, 
235;  and  superstition,  516;  hindered 
by  religion,  517;  for  democracy,  546; 
moral,  5292;  social,  518  ff.,  546; 
state,  349-50 ;   vocational,  518. 

Ego,  19,  28,  35. 

Elites,  118,  124,  219,  541,  Chap.  XXVI. 

Ennui  theory  of  progress,  476,  536. 

Ethical  forces  denied,  206. 

Eugenics,  120,  146,  539,  Chap.  XVII. 

Evolution,  distinguished  from  progress, 
94-5  ;   biological  factors  in,  239. 


Family,  and  social  selves,  64  ff ;  changes 
in,  177;  economic  basis  of,  210;  edu- 
cation for,  531-2;  primitive,  90;  serv- 
ices of  to  progress,  332-3,  335,  540; 
social  utiUty  of,  66;  disservices,  333; 
ceding  to  the  state,  335;  and  Chris- 
tian church,  429,  436. 

Fatalism,  105. 

Feebleminded,  53. 

Fittest,  survival  of,  243,  245  ff. 

Food-quest,  89,  206. 

Foreign  missions,  62,  222,  321,  430. 

Freedom,  52-3,  451,  537. 

Free  will,  51  ff. 

G 

Galton,  F.,  cited,  54,  66,  239,  257-8,  264, 

433- 

Genius,  extent  of,  268  ff.,  273,  385-6, 
391 ;  nature  of,  47,  179;  and  race  mix- 
ture, 315;  services  of,  381-2;  Umi- 
tations  of,  402;  production  of,  391, 
401,  542. 

Geographic  factor  in  progress.  Chap.  IX. 

God,  evolving?,  .4;  in  human  progress, 
442-52,  543;  used  for  practical  pur- 
poses, 419. 

Government,  function  of,  337;  services 
of,  337-8,  340,  540;  origin  of,  339; 
trend  of,  351;  cost  of,  340-1;  ad- 
ministrative aspect  of,  342-3  ;  expert 
service  in,  344-5 ;  and  education, 
346  ff. 

Great-man  theory  of  progress,  380  ff; 
criticized,  387  flE. ;  Hegel's  concept  of, 

453- 
Guilds,  198-9. 
Gumplowicz,  L.,  cited,  133,  276  ff. 


H 

Habits,  unstable,  225. 

Heaven,  primitive,  208. 

Hegel,  cited,  441,  451  ff.,  460. 

Herder,  cited,  174,  446-7. 

Heredity,  physical,  53  ff.,  263  ff. 

Hero,  analyzed,  389-go. 

History  Clock,  84-5. 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  cited,  41,  117,  355. 

Human     character,     improvements    in, 

129  ff. 
Human  nature,  3  ff.,  79,  508. 
Huxley,  T.  H.,  cited,  83,  243,  337,  481. 


Ideals,  power  of  in  history,  233,  Chap. 

XXX;   fostered  by  religion,  422  ff. 
Ideas,  role  of  in  social  progress.  Chap. 

XXXI. 
Imaginary  environment,  415,  417,  425- 
Imagination,    60  ff.,    68,    130,    162,   403, 

438,  483-4,  486. 
Imitation,  64,  68. 
Immigrants,  56. 
Immortality,  22,  425. 
Individual    and   group,    11,    45  5-,    347. 

417,  419,  547- 
Instincts,  theory  of  criticized,  473,  546; 

social,  41,  44,  75. 
Institutions,  defined,  325  ;   hinder  human 

development,  458-9 ;  and  human  prog- 
ress. Chaps.  XXI-XXIX. 
Intelligence    in    progress,     246,     Chap. 

XXXI. 
Inter-group    selection,     Chap.    XVIII; 

barriers  through  religion,  430. 
InternationaUsm,  284-6,  320,  351.  ] 
Intolerance  a  duty?,  430-1- 
Invention,  Chap.  X,  231. 
Isolation,  social  effects  of,  309-10. 


James,  W.,  cited,  382,  422,  427. 
Jordan,  D.  S.,  cited,  20,  54,  125,  300. 


Kant,  cited,  93,  447-8. 

Kidd,  B.,  cited,  73,  250-1,  417,  44i- 


Language,  primitive,  89;    effect  of  bor- 
rowing, 317 ;  social  services  of,  407  2- J 


INDEX 


577 


assimilative  power  of,  410;  archaic 
may  hinder  progress,  412-3;  and 
moral  progress,  408;    world,  408. 

Law,  contributions  of  to  progress,  354  fl. ; 
economic  basis  of,  230-1;  not  a  pro- 
gressive force,  352-3;  sources  of, 
354-5;    new  concepts  of,  363-4.  54i- 

Leaders,  necessary,  '3g2-3,  405 ;  when 
serviceable  to  progress,  405,  541 ; 
breeding  of,  3g4. 

Le  Bon,  G.,  cited,  50,  281-3,  365,  382, 
388,  414- 

Leisure,  187,  225. 

Lessing,  cited,  446,  465. 

Library,  socializing  the,  528. 

Literature  and  progress,  488  fif. 

Longevity  increasing,  121-2. 

Love  as  the  social  bond,  41,  62. 

Loyalty,  41. 

M 

Magic,  89,  298,  427. 

Mallock,  W.  H.,  327-8,  381,  39i.  40i- 

Man,  a   geographic    agent,   17 1-4;    do- 
mesticated by  religion,  417- 

Marx,  K.,  cited,  134,  203,  225,  453,  461- 

Masses,    service    of    the,    386-7;     dis- 
paraged, 401. 

MateriaUstic  conception  of  history.  202. 

Mental,  defectives,   249;  progress,   535. 

Metamorphosis,  13  2.,  26. 

Metaphysics,  20,  loi. 

Migration,  309  S. 

Militarism,  286,  301,  307,  321,  347.  S40- 

Mill,  J.  S.,  cited,  98,  259,  396,  399.  465. 
468. 

Mob  mind,  50. 

Money,  Chap.  XL 

Montesquieu,  cited,  157,  1605.,  346,  348- 

Moral,  element  in  progress,  98,  126  ff., 
455,  462,  470,  477 ;  evolution,  60-1 ; 
imagination,  483. 

Morals,  social  origin  of,  36;  economic 
basis  of,  200-1. 

Morley,  J.,  cited,  105,  507-8. 

Multiple  origin  of  man,  274,  276. 

N 
Nationalism,  228. 

Nietzsche,  F.,  cited,  247,  381,  426,  433, 
470. 

O 

Organic  theory  of  society,  43,  229-30,  457- 
Over-population,  no,  120,  251-2. 
Ownership,  significance  of,  177- 
2P 


Pacifism,  293,  306. 

Pan-Germanism,  274. 

Peace,  194,  278;  League  to  Enforce,  306, 

308. 
Peaceful    group    contacts.    Chap.    XX, 

431- 
Perfectionism,  102,  134. 
Personality,  5,  11,  19,  24,  64;    contribu- 

tive  type  of,  79,  487,  522. 
Plato,  cited,  3,    43.    76,    254,   405,   465, 

497- 

Play,  social  function  of,  527-8. 

Political  advance  and  economic  progress, 
219. 

Poverty,  480;   as  a  cost  of  progress,  251 ; 
abolition  of,  235,  251,  306. 

Prehistoric  man,  86-7. 

Priesthood,  396,  398,  399.  419-20,  43S, 
438. 

Primitive  culture,  86  ff. 

Progress,  ancient  ideas  of,  93-4;    tests 
of.  Chap.  VII ;   denials  of,  135  ff-,  536 ; 
three  opinions  on,  83-4;    automatic?, 
103,  507,  548;    necessary?,   100,   102, 
535;   universal?,  103-4,  536;   costs  of, 
106-7,  124,  544;  law  of,  108,  no;  rate 
of,  105,  109-12;   based  on  human  ef- 
fort, 105,  n2,  151,507,544;   economic 
interpretation    of.     Chap.    XIV-XV, 
538 ;  through  weakness,  247  ;  planless, 
7;     scientific,    106;     verifiable,    123; 
conscious    vs.    haphazard,    506,    536; 
intentional    vs.    unintentional,    544-5 ; 
contrasted   with   change,   92,   94,   96; 
contrasted  with  evolution,  94-5  ;    con- 
trasted   with    race    progress,    99-100, 
506;     as    achievement,    97,    191;     as 
adaptation,  96-7,  i45;   as  civilization, 
114  S.;    as  cosmic  evolution,  loi ;    as 
elimination  of  error,  482 ;    as  elimina- 
tion of  fear,  486  ;   as  ethical  order,  148, 
453  ;   as  growth  in  population,  iig  ff. ; 
as  increase  of  happiness,  98,  148;    as 
health  and  longevity,   12 1-3;    as  hu- 
man  will,    458,    508;     as   increase   of 
wealth,    123-4,    191.    Chap.   XII;     as 
identification   of    personal   and    social 
interest,  547;    as  morahty,  98,  126  ff., 
455,  462;    as  opportunity,  125;    as  a 
superstition,     105 ;     and    art.    Chap. 
XXXII;     and    capital.    Chap.    XII; 
and  cUmate,   157  ff-;    and  division  of 
labor,    Chap.   XIII;     and   education. 


578 


INDEX 


Sioff. ;  and  the  elite,  403;  and  eu- 
genics, Chap.  XVII ;  and  government, 
Chap.  XXIII ;  and  ideals.  Chap. 
XXX;  9.nd  intelligence,  246;  and 
invention.  Chap.  X;  and  law,  Chap. 
XXIV;  and  money,  Chap.  XI,  igi; 
and  property.  Chap.  XXI;  and  pub- 
lic opinion.  Chap.  XXV ;  and  race 
conflict.  Chap.  XVIII;  and  religion, 
4175.;  and  selection.  Chap.  XVI; 
and  sentimentalism,  104 ;  and  sound 
thinking.  Chap.  XXXI,  488;  and 
top3graphy,  169  fi.;  and  war,  Chap. 
XIX. 

Property,  igo,  226,  229,  232;  and  family 
forms,  334;  destruction  of,  231,  232, 
423,  429;  function  of.  Chap.  XXI; 
need  for  private  ownership  of,  330; 
origin  of,  226;  responsibilities  of,  330; 
unequal  distribution  of,  147,  330. 

Providence  and  progress,  93,  441-9. 

Public  opinion,  defined,  365-70;  edu- 
cation and,  377-8 ;  functions  of,  370-2  ; 
limitations  upon,  3726.;  newspapers 
and,  375-7;  organizing  of,  374-S ; 
service  of,  371,  541. 

Purposive  human  breeding,  264;  ob- 
stacles to,  265-6. 


R 


Race,  antagonism  and  economic  in- 
terest, 223-4;  conflict.  Chap.  XVIII, 
539;  contact,  results  of,  312  S.,  318; 
egotism,  275-6;  and  geography, 
1592.;  mixture,  313  ff.;  prejudice, 
279 ;  psychological  meaning  of,  280  ff. ; 
sentiment,  283-4;  superior  and  in- 
ferior, 27s,  276,  279,  315-16;  suicide, 
270,  424-5;    vitality,  279. 

Religion,  70,  73-4,  543 ;  and  climate, 
164-5;  and  economics,  231-2,  4195., 
429;  and  education,  435-6,  513,  517; 
and  health,  437;  and  selection,  253, 
431-2;  as  social  discipline,  417,  424; 
conserves  social  values,  424 ;  contrib- 
utes to  speculation,  421  ff.;  biologi- 
cal services  of,  418,  426;  disservices 
of,  427-36;  effect  of  on  law,  360-1, 
433~4I  evokes  fine  arts,  425;  fosters 
idealism,  422  fi.;  hindrance  to  prog- 
ress, 421,  436;  types  of,  421;  primi- 
tive, 88;   conservative,  434. 

Religious  conversion,  15. 

Ribot,  cited,  20,  23,  26,  28,  69. 


Right-sized  population,  121. 

Ross,  E.  A.,  cited,  96,  180,  343,  396,  474, 

476. 
Rousseau,  cited,  184. 


Samurai,  77,  403.  533- 

SchmoUer,  G.,  cited,  218,  344,  451. 

Science,  progressive  function  of,  484-5. 

.Scientific  management,  184. 

Selection,  biological.  Chap.  XVI ;  inter- 
group.  Chap.  XVIII;  "natural"  vs. 
"social,"  242  ff;  sexual,  243-5  ;  social, 
98,  253 ;  religion  and,  253 ;  slavery 
and,  299. 

Self,  as  an  abstraction,  19;  as  a  coali- 
tion, 23  ;  as  a  contributing  personality, 
79;  as  dream-double,  11;  as  hobby, 
69;  as  name,  10;  as  property,  11,  69; 
as  shadow,  11;  as  social  product, 
Chaps.  IV-V ;  as  social  service,  70  ff. ; 
as  soul,  16;  children's  ideas  of,  37-9; 
multiple,  27-8;  pathologic,  26-7; 
psychology  of.  Chap.  Ill ;  somatic 
basis  of,  20-1 ;  subconscious,  24 ; 
variations  in,  22  ff. 

Selfishness,  6,  61,  74. 

Sentiment,  role  of  in  evolution,  248  ff. 

Sentimentalism,  120,  142. 

Settlements,  59,  527. 

Sexual  selection,  142,  243-5. 

Shaw,  G.  B.,  cited,  6,  135-9,  4Q4- 

Sin,  12,  74,  428. 

Social  causation,  109;  control,  48; 
Darwinism,  40-1,  275,  293 ;  deter- 
minism, 51  ff.;  education,  8,  68,  75, 
78,  406,  518  ff.,  546;  forces,  loi ; 
heredity,  31,  54  ff.,  92,  239. 

Social,  inequality  defended,  327-8;  jus- 
tice, 60,  68,  235,  464,  52s,  540;  policy, 
elements  in,  235,  396,  406,  538 ;  reform, 
3,  516;   solidarity,  44,  52 2. 

Socialism,  5,  138-9,  142,  329,  351,  403. 

Socialists,  3,  202,  388. 

Socializing  opportunity,  4,  125,  272. 

Sociological  jurisprudence,  363-4. 

Soul,  II,  16. 

Spencer,  H.,  cited,  loi,  193,  250,  266, 
354,  388,  418,  474,  S19. 

Spiritual  interpretation  of  history,  459, 
461. 

Sterilization  of  the  unfit,  260,  261. 

Struggle  for  life,  41-2;  religion  in,  420; 
for  others,  72  ;  instinct  of,  305. 


INDEX 


579 


Sumner,  W.  G.,  cited,  206,  20Q,  246,  200, 

2y4.  sH,  500. 
Superman,  137,  381. 
Superstition,  8g,  105,  516. 
Survival,  of  the  fittest,  243,  245  S. ;    of 

the  liest,  250. 
Sympathy,  60,  248-9. 
Syndicalism,  199. 


Taboo,  12,  231,  232,  349, 355, 418-19, 427, 

429. 
Theological   views   of   progress,    442  ff. ; 

criticized,  450. 
Theology,  hinders  science,  436. 
Thinking,  natural,  402;   feared,  403. 
Tolerance,   in   racial   contacts,   319;    in 

religion,  430-1,  438. 
Tools,  181,  185. 
Totemism,  12,  231. 

U 

Universal  Races  Congress,  63,  284,  286. 
Universal  service,  307. 
Universities,  teaching  in  German,  347. 
Utopia,  74,  146,  461,  489. 


V 

Value,  social,  as  index  of  progress,  477, 

537- 

Variation  essential  to  progress,  239. 

Vocational  education,  518,  525-7;  guid- 
ance, 223,  271. 

W 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  cited,  139,  243-5,  248, 
267,  271-2. 

Wallas,  G.,  cited,  141,  225,  485. 

War,  and  economic  progress,  219;  and 
invention,  290;  and  magic,  298-9; 
and  race  health,  292 ;  and  social  co- 
herence, 277,  289  flf.;  as  a  selective 
agency,  288,  299,  539 ;  as  a  socializing 
principle,  41;  as  unintelligence,  467; 
disgenic  effects  of,  299  ff. ;  Nietzsche 
on,  234;  substitutes  for,  306-7,  540; 
wastes  through,  299  ff.,  539. 

Ward,  L.  F.,  cited,  97,  113,  228,  268, 
289,  342,  367,  482,  505,  511,  516. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  cited,  5,  61,  67,  199- 
461. 

Woman,  as  progressive  agent,  196;  as 
selective  agent,  244,  267.^ 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


T 


HE  following   pages  contain   advertisements  of   a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


Societal  Evolution 

A  Study  of  the  Evolutionary  Basis  of  the  Science  of  Society 
By  albert  galloway  KELLER 

Professor  of  the  Science  of  Society  in  Yale  University 

i2mo,  $  I. SO 

The  author  shows  that  the  evolutionary  formula  of  Darwin, 
the  terms  variation,  selection,  etc.,  can  be  carried  over  to  the 
social  field,  without  resting  any  weight  on  analogy ;  and  thus 
there  can  be  given  to  these  terms,  which  are  now  used  indis- 
crnninately  in  social  writings  of  all  kinds,  something  rather 
more  sharp  in  the  way  of  connotation.  He  shows  the  nature  of 
variation  when  it  is  in  the  social  field ;  how  social  selection  is 
related  to,  and  diflierent  from,  natural  selection ;  how  social 
transmission  (tradition)  is  performed,  and  what  it  does ;  and 
how  social  institutions  exhibit  adaptation  to  environment, 
natural  and  artificialized.  The  center  of  the  book  lies  in  the 
discussion  of  rational  selection,  how  far  possible  and  how. 
Adaptation  shows  that  any  institution  —  settled  institution  —  is 
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In  the  words  of  one  of  the  foremost  sociologists  of  the  day, 
who  has  read  the  book  in  manuscript,  it  is  "  a  serious  and  im- 
portant work.  Professor  Keller  carries  on  the  interpretation  of 
society  begun  by  the  late  Professor  William  G.  Sumner  and 
greatly  adds  to  the  value  of  Sumner's  exposition  by  this  rounding 
out.  As  scientific  work,  it  is  thoroughly  good  throughout, 
sober,  well  buttressed  and  keenly  intelligent  at  every  point. 
Every  student  of  sociology  will  welcome  it,  and  it  is  sure  to  hold 
an  important  place  for  a  good  while  to  come.  Keller  writes  a 
straightforward,  strong  and  clear  style.  All  in  all,  the  work 
stands  out  as  greatly  superior  to  the  run  of  sociological  writings 
for  four  or  five  years  past." 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


Poverty  and  Social  Progress 


By  MAURICE   PARMELEE,   Ph.D. 

Author  of  "  The  Science  of  Human  Behavior  " 


Cloth,  $i.go 


The  author  has  made  a  comprehensive  survey  of  the  problems 
of  poverty  which  shows  the  one-sided  character  of  many  of  the 
explanations  of  its  causation,  and  which  will  at  least  furnish  the 
starting  point  for  an  effective  program  of  prevention. 

In  a  brief  introduction  are  discussed  the  organization  of 
society  and  pathological  social  conditions.  The  second  part  is 
devoted  to  an  extended  discussion  of  the  causes  and  conditions 
of  poverty,  in  which  the  author  has,  by  extensiveness  of  treat- 
ment, placed  the  emphasis  on  the  two  fundamental  economic 
problems,  namely,  those  of  production  and  the  distribution  of 
wealth.  Three  chapters  are  devoted  to  a  discussion  of  the 
biological  factors  in  the  causation  of  poverty.  Readers  not  in- 
terested in  this  aspect  of  the  subject  may  omit  these  chapters, 
however,  without  being  inconvenienced  in  reading  the  remainder 
of  the  book. 

Part  III  describes  the  Remedial  and  Preventive  Meas- 
ures and  includes  chapters  on :  The  Modern  Humanitarian 
Movement ;  The  Nature  of  Philanthropy  both  Private  and 
Public;  Dependents  and  Defectives;  Eugenic  Measures;  Thrift; 
Social  Insurance  ;  The  Raising  of  Wages  and  the  Regulation  of 
Labor  Supply ;  The  Productiveness  of  Society ;  The  Industrial 
Democracy. 

The  book  is  suitable  for  use  as  a  text-book  for  college  and 
university  courses  on  charities,  poverty,  pauperism,  dependency 
and  social  pathology.  It  will  also  be  useful  to  persons  who  are 
interested  in  these  important  social  questions. 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


The  Principles  of  Anthropology  and  Sociology 
in  Their  Relations  to  Criminal  Procedure 

By  MAURICE   PARMELEE,   Ph.D. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.2^ 

Mr.  Parmelee  has  undertaken,  in  this  interesting  book,  to 
make  available  for  practical  use  some  of  the  results  obtained  by 
European  students  of  criminology,  whose  methods  are  far  in 
advance  of  those  in  this  country.  The  fallacy  of  considering 
the  moral  responsibility  of  the  offender  as  the  test  of  criminality 
instead  of  the  dangerousness  of  the  criminal  to  society,  is  shown 
in  a  straightforward  treatment  of  the  present  methods  of  crimi- 
nal procedure,  their  weakness  and  abuses.  His  reasons  for  the 
abolishment  of  obsolete  methods  of  examination  and  trial  by  in- 
competent authorities  ;  for  the  appointment  of  specially  trained 
judges  and  examiners,  and  the  necessity  for  scientific  study  of 
criminal  procedure,  are  clear,  convincing,  and  enlightening. 
The  relations  of  heredity  and  environment,  the  necessity  of  in- 
dividual treatment  with  the  view  of  reform  wherever  possible  ; 
the  suspension  of  sentence  and  the  probation  system ;  methods 
of  repressing  crime,  and  the  miscarriage  of  justice  through  the 
technicalities  of  the  courts,  are  subjects  that  are  of  vital  interest 
to  every  reader. 

Mr.  Parmelee  has  drawn  a  vivid  though  unbiased  picture 
which  will  be  a  revelation  to  the  man  who  would  know,  and  he 
has  forcefully  outlined  the  new  methods  necessary  for  the  im- 
provement of  our  present  system. 

"  The  discussion  is  in  every  way  strong  and  clear,  and  de- 
serves the  careful  study  of  all  intelligent  citizens." —  The  Dial. 


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Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  Tork 


AMERICAN    SOCIAL   PROGRESS   SERIES 

Edited  by  Professor  SAMUEL  McCUNE  LINDSAY 

Social  Reform  and  the  Constitution 

By   frank  J.   GOODNOW  i2mo,$i.5o 

"  The  work  is  well  worth  not  only  reading  but  study  and  is  a  decided  contribution 
to  the  literature  of  the  subject."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

The  New  Basis  of  Civilization 

By   SIMON   N.    PATTEN  i2mo,U-oo 

"The  book  is  valuable  and  inspiring  in  its  general  conception  and  guiding 
principles.  Social  workers  will  welcome  it,  and  moralists  should  greatly  profit  by 
its  teachings." — ■  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

Standards  of  Public  Morality 

By   ARTHUR   TWINING   HADLEY  i2mo,$T.oo 

"  The  book  is  worth  reading  not  only  once,  but  twice."  —  New  York  Times. 

Misery  and  Its  Causes 

By   EDWARD   T.    DEVINE  i2mo,$i.25 

"  One  of  the  most  vital  and  helpful  books  on  social  problems  ever  pub- 
lished." —  CongregationaTist  and  Christian  World. 

Governmental  Action  for  Social  Welfare 

By   JEREMIAH   W.   JENKS  i2mo,$i.oo 

"  Professor  Jenks'  little  book  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  every  member  of  every 
legislature  in  the  country."  —  Review  of  Reviews. 

The  Social  Basis  of  Religion 

By   SIMON   N.    PATTEN  i2mo,$i.25 

"  It  is  a  work  of  deep  thought  and  abundant  research.  Those  who  read  it  will 
find  their  ideas  and  thoughts  quickened  and  will  be  sure  that  their  time  has  been 
profitably  spent."  —  Sa/t  Lake  Tribune. 

The  Church  and  Society 

By   R.    FULTON    CUTTING  i2mo,$i.2S 

"A  stimulating  and  informing  little  book."  —  Boston  Herald. 

•^The  Juvenile  Court 

By  THOMAS    D.    ELIOT  i2mo,$i.25 

"  Another  volume  which  will  repay  careful  reading  —  the  most  useful  treatise  on 
youthful  criminology."  —  Providence  Journal. 

Social   Insurance  :    A  Program  for  Social  Reform 

By   henry   ROGERS   SEAGER  i2mo,$i.oo 

The  City  Worker's  World  in  America 

By  MARY   KINGSBURY  SUNKHOVITCH, 

Director  of  Greenwich  House  i2mo,  $1.2^ 


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